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THE 

PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

OF 1860 



BY 



EMERSON DAVID FITE, Ph.D. 

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN YALE UNIVERSITY 

AUTHOR OF "SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS 

IN THE NORTH DURING THE CIVIL WAR" 



Neirt gorft 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1911 

All rights reserved 



Copyright, 1911, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published September, i-gii 






Nortooolf ^rc8« 

J. S. Gushing' Co. — IJerwick & Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



©CI.A2:)537D 



THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1860 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NBW YORK • BOSTON - CHICAGO 
SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



/ 



no 

PREFACE 

Presidential campaigns in the United States are great pop- 
ular debates, in which different sections of the country and differ- 
ent political parties join in discussing concrete propositions of 
national policy from various points of view, and sometimes pass 
judgments of far-reaching importance ; almost invariably, the 
contests, with their divergent moods and appeals, well merit 
close study. Yet, strangely enough, they have hitherto been 
neglected as subjects for historical investigation, so that the 
present volume, as far as the author's knowledge extends, is the 
first serious work done in the field. My attention was first 
directed to the war elections by Professor Edward Channing, 
to whom I am glad to render cordial thanks. 

The publication of the party platforms in the Appendix is 
self-explanatory ; the four typical campaign speeches, hitherto 
not readily accessible, are printed because of the valuable light 
which they throw on the arguments offered to the people in 
the crisis. 

EMERSON DAVID FITE. 

New Haven, Connecticut, 
October, 1910. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Introduction ix 

CHAPTER 

I. John Brown 1 

n. Helper's " Impending Crisis " and the Speakership Con- 
test 33 

III. Anti-slavery in the House and Senate .... 47 

IV. The Popular Discussion of Slavery 59 

V. The Democratic Conventions 92 

VI. The Republican Convention 117 

VIL Campaign Arguments 132 

VIII. Leaders and Conduct of the Campaign .... 205 

Appendix A. The Party Platforms 237 

Appendix B. Republican Campaign Speech by Carl Schurz . 244 
Appendix C. Democratic Campaign Speech by Stephen A. 

Douglas 276 

Appendix D. Democratic Campaign Speech by William L. 

Yancey 301 

Appendix E, Constitutional Union Campaign Speech by W. G. 

Brownlow 330 

Index 343 



INTRODUCTION 

There have been more exciting and enthusiastic political 
campaigns in the history of the country than that of 1860, 
such as those of 1840 and of 1856 ; one at least has involved 
equally important issues, that of 1864 ; but never has a cam- 
paign been waged in which the people of the whole nation 
have taken a more calm, serious, and intelligent interest. 

The most characteristic feature of this campaign was the 
strong control over the political situation in the North ex- 
ercised by the masses of the people; in the South it was 
more of a battle of leaders. From the moment of John 
Brown's raid and the dramatic importance suddenly given 
in the House of Representatives to Hinton Rowan Helper's 
Impending Crisis to the day of the election, there was no 
moment when politics were not under popular domina- 
tion ; compared with the point of view of the people, and 
their words and deeds, the platforms and utterances of 
leaders were of minor importance. The Harper's Ferry 
raid was not "a mere episode, a spectacular incident, with- 
out consequence " ; everything would not " have happened 
just as, in fact, it did happen, if Brown had never lived, 
and never been hung." ^ The tide of the " irrepressible 
conflict " had, indeed, by that time already set in, but the 
Charlestown drama further agitated the fury of its currents, 
added to their volume, and immeasurably accelerated their 
speed. The resulting popular reaction against slavery far 

1 This quotation is an opinion expressed in the Atlantic Monthly, 
November, 1910, p. 667, by John T. Morse, Jr., in a review of John 
Brown: A Biography Fifty Years After, by Oswald Garrison Villard, 
Boston, 1910. 

ix 



X INTRODUCTION 

exceeded any ever before known. Herein, and not in the 
mere trial and execution, must be sought the real signifi- 
cance of the event. The South now with new hatred ex- 
pelled from its midst suspected Northerners, and the stories 
of the victims aroused new animosities in the North against 
the South ; by countless fresh aggressions, one following 
closely upon another, and persisting throughout the can- 
vass, the flames of sectional hatred were fanned brighter and 
brighter. 

Homely, almost unnoticed events among the people reveal 
the full influence of the speakership contest and of Helper's 
Crisis. With suddenness and amid unusual excitement 
political parties were led to commit themselves to opinions 
from which there could be no retraction, with the nomi- 
nating conventions and the summer's campaign close at 
hand. Conservatives stiffened in their conservatism, the 
radicals became more sturdy and uncompromising, while 
between the two surging currents William H. Seward, not 
knowing which way to turn, trembled and fell, and lost 
the prize of a presidential nomination. This was but one of 
the effects of Brown's raid, wrought through an aroused 
people. 

The popular judgment of slavery dictated the party plat- 
forms, and later, when the deceptions and evasions of these 
documents became apparent, practically determined the 
issues of the campaign itself, "slavery" or ''no slavery," 
"union" or "secession." As if to recognize this control of 
the people and helplessness of the leaders, the Republicans 
held their convention in a large hall before ten thousand 
spectators, and welcomed the active interference of the crowd 
in that body's proceedings, unconsciously setting a precedent 
pregnant with evil for the future ; significant, too, is the 
fact that the most unique demonstration of the campaign, 
the activities of the Republican marching clubs, the 
Wide-Awakes, arose spontaneously from the people. 



INTRODUCTION xi 

With their supreme control the people were serious-minded ; 
physical violence and offensive personaUties, as a rule, were 
conspicuously absent ; campaign speeches far exceeded in 
number those delivered in any previous contest, and were 
characterized by an intellectual tone and historical breadth 
of view that were remarkable. The whole history of the 
country, and its social, legal, and governmental institutions, 
were searched for proof and refutation ; contemporary so- 
ciety, manners, and customs were rigorously held up to 
view, analyzed, and judged. Rarely has the nation taken a 
broader view of itself. 

Heckling of speakers on the stump, the natural expres- 
sion of a serious-minded electorate and at the present day 
common in English political life, although lacking in the 
United States, was now prominent. Douglas' frank answers 
on secession and coercion, Breckenridge's evasive answers 
on the same topics, Yancey's evasions on secession, and 
Douglas' on the morality of slavery were marked and in- 
fluential features of the struggle. 

Every party was guilty of hedging on some subject. Both 
Republicans, and Breckenridgeites to some extent, kept 
clear of the subject of secession, the latter because their 
desire to secede was better concealed for the moment, 
the former because while opposing secession they did not 
care to enhance the timeliness of the subject by discussing 
it. Republicans, too, generally refused to meet Douglas 
in the oi5en on popular sovereignty ; Douglasites would not 
commit themselves on the morality of slavery, while the 
Bell-Everetts hardly knew what they believed on any topic. 
Except for their Border state leader, who was forced to 
trim in order to carry his home communities with him, the 
Breckenridgeites were the most open of all the parties. 

Commercial considerations, although not usually recog- 
nized as one of the factors that went to make up the popular 
judgment of 1860, were yet of considerable weight. North- 



xii INTRODUCTION 

erners, following the lead of Helper, expressed in the 
Crisis, and of Senator Sumner in his speech on ''The Bar- 
barism of Slavery," were fond of boasting of their own 
commercial prosperity and of taunting the South with com- 
mercial inferiority; only rarely did a Southerner attempt 
an answer, and then with sorry results, as witness William 
L. Yancey, in his New York speech. Yet the single crop of 
cotton, although it could not stand in comparison with the 
diversified industries and pursuits of the North, was sufficient 
cause for boasting. But it is almost pathetic to behold the 
strange infatuation that prompted Southerners to stake 
their hopes of European intervention, and through this, 
their hopes of an independent Southern nation, so largely 
upon the world's dependence on King Cotton. 

In the last analysis the one complete justification of seces- 
sion was the imperative necessity of saving the vast prop- 
erty of slavery from destruction ; secession was a commercial 
necessity, designed to make these billions secure from out- 
side interference. Viewed in this fight, secession was right, 
for any people, prompted by the commonest motives of self- 
respect and self-defense, and with no moral scruples against 
slavery, would have followed the same course. The present 
generation of Northerners, born and reared after the war, 
must shake off theu- inherited pofitical passions and prej- 
udices, and pronounce the verdict of justification for the 
South. Believing slavery right, it was the duty of the South 
to defend it. It is time that the words "traitors," ''conspir- 
ators," "rebels," and "rebellion" be discarded. But the 
North was no less right in opposing slavery, for theirs was 
a course springing from the natural promptings of morality. 
History, then, must adjudge that both sides in the contro- 
versy were right, and that the war was bound to come when 
the opposing sides conscientiously held, the one to the WTong, 
the other to the right, of slavery. 

How the two sections came to hold opposite views on 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

slavery is a problem hard to solve, though Douglas' famous 
dictum would seem convincing. ''Slavery, therefore, does 
not depend on the law. It is governed by climate, soil, and 
productions, by political economy." 

Commercial factors, in this early day of the Republican 
party, when moral principles hav^ generally been reckoned 
its sole stock in trade, had a determining influence on the 
dominant party. The tariff, internal improvements, a Pacific 
raihoad, a Pacific telegraph, and a Homestead Act, were not 
mere subterfuges to cover up offensive tendencies of anti- 
slavery; they were as well a recognition of the industrial 
needs of the country. The West, after a decade of rapid 
expansion, now loomed large in the pubhc eye; already 
the way was prepared for that diversion of markets and 
transportation routes to the new section that characterized 
the succeeding war period. Develop the West was the cry, 
fill it with antislavery immigrants from the East and from 
Europe, pass the Homestead Act, and the slavery question 
will be settled. 

The interested student of poHtical science finds much to 
attract him in the year's happenings ; indeed, his is the best 
point of view from which to study the national conven- 
tions, the principle of availability and of the dark horse 
in the Republican convention, which gave the nation its 
greatest president, not for his own known qualities but for 
the conscious purpose of defeating another, and the wran- 
gling of the Democrats over the unit rule, the two-thirds rule, 
convention representation, bolting, and the powers of con- 
vention committees, presiding officers, and national com- 
mittees. He may study fusion in its practical workings, 
the customary powers of presidential electors, the possi- 
bilities involved in a presidential election in the House of 
Representatives, and the working of the spoils system at the 
height of its power. 



presidein^tial campaign 



CHAPTER I 

JOHN BROWN 

ON the morning of Tuesday, the eighteenth of October, 
1859, the leading New York papers and a few in other 
cities printed vague rumors of an uprising of slaves at Har- 
per's Ferry, Virginia, and almost immediately full confirma- 
tion of the story followed the first dispatch, as detail after 
detail was laid before the country. On the preceding Sunday 
night, the sixteenth of October, between eleven and twelve 
o'clock, a band of twenty-two men, each armed with a rifle 
and pistols, rushed across the Potomac River from the 
opposite Maryland shore and took forcible possession of the 
little Virginia village of Harper's Ferry, first of the streets, 
then of the engine house and the government arsenal itself, 
and finally of the armory a half mile away. In an immediate 
attempt to liberate slaves, armed parties of the raiders 
scoured the surrounding regions and still under the cover 
of darkness brought in as prisoners three or four gentleman 
slaveholders with their slaves 

Within two hours a passenger train, arriving on the Balti- 
more and Ohio Railroad, was arrested at the bridge, but was 
soon allowed to go on its way, — the bearer of the first in- 
teUigence of trouble to the outside world ; in the darkness 
and confusion at the bridge a negro porter in the employ of 
the railroad was killed, although the village itself was not dis- 



2 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

turbed. When the villagers stirred at daybreak, workmen 
coming to the government works were fallen upon and im- 
prisoned, until the number of prisoners in the hands of the 
attacking party totalled over forty. Even then, Monday 
morning was far advanced before the real situation was well 
known to all the citizens. . From the nearby towns of Charles- 
town and Martinsburg, ten and twenty miles away, armed 
relief parties set out, but before their arrival the inhabitants 
of Harper's Ferry recaptured the outlying armory after 
bloody fighting and forced the surrender of many prisoners 
at the arsenal. Ten leading hostages, however, still re- 
mained in the engine house under the close guard of eight 
or nine of the invaders, and were not released until this 
stronghold was carried by storm by United States marines 
under the command of Robert E. Lee, troops sent posthaste 
from Washington by President Buchanan at the urgent 
request of the Governor of Virginia. In the entire encounter, 
from the midnight attack until the final surrender, four of 
the inhabitants of the town were killed and ten of the con- 
spirators, while seven of the latter suffered arrest and five 
escaped. Not a slave left his master,^ 

The leader of this ill-fated expedition, John Brown of 
Ossawatomie, and all his followers, were militant antislavery 
crusaders, who had but recently arrived from the war-ridden 
territory of Kansas, where in the support of their principles 
they had been guilty of many dastardly crimes, including 
robbery and murder ; it was there in the West, in fact, that 
they had planned the Virginia raid, which was to be simply 
a repetition of the nigger-stealing raids which the band had 
carried on from Kansas into Missouri. 

Despite his record Brown proved to be a remarkable man, 
as even his enemies admitted. An unsjrmpathetic Ohio 
Congressman, who visited him in prison before his trial 
and while his wounds were still fresh, reported : ''It is vain 

1 U.S. Senate Reports, 36 Cong., 1 Sess., No. 278. 



JOHN BROWN 3 

to underestimate either the man or the conspiracy. Cap- 
tain John Brown is as brave and resolute a man as ever 
headed an insurrection, and in a good cause and with a 
sufficient force would have made a consummate partisan 
commander. He has coolness, daring, persistence, the stoic 
faith and patience, and a firmness of will and purpose un- 
conquerable. He is the furthest removed from the ordinary 
ruffian, fanatic, or madman." ^ Governor Wise of Virginia 
said: ''They are mistaken who take him for a madman. 
He is a man of clear head, courageous fortitude, and simple 
ingenuousness. He is cool, collected, indomitable ; and it 
is but just to him to say that he was humane to his prisoners ; 
and he inspired all with great trust in his integrity and as a 
man of truth. He is a fanatic, vain and garrulous, but firm, 
truthful, intelhgent." ^ 

In an interview with a reporter of the New York Herald 
and others, Brown himself explained his purposes in words 
the simple grandeur of which went straight to the Northern 
heart. ''Mr. Mason. How do you justify your acts? 
Mr. Brown. I think, my friend, you are guilty of a great 
wrong against God and humanity. I say it without wishing 
to be offensive, and it would be perfectly right for any one 
to interfere with you, so far as to free those you wickedly 
and willfully hold in bondage. I do not say this insultingly. 
Mr. Mason. I understand that. Mr. Brown. I think I 
did right and that others will do right who interfere with 
you at any and at all times ; I hold that the Golden Rule, 
'Do unto others as you would that others should do unto 
you,' apphes to all that would help others to gain their 
liberty. A Bystander. Do you consider this a religious 
movement? Mr. Brown. It is, in my judgment, the 
greatest service that a man can render to God. Bystander. 

^ The American Conflict, by Horace Greeley, Hartford, 1864-1866, 1, 294. 
2 History of the Rise and Fall [of the Slave Power in America, by Henry 
Wilson, Boston, 1872-1877, II, 595. 



4 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

Do you consider yourself an instrument in the hands of 
Providence ? Mr. Brown. I do. Bystander. Upon what 
principle do you justify your acts ? Mr. Brown. Upon the 
Golden Rule. I pity the poor in bondage that have none 
to help them; that is why I am here; not to gratify any 
personal animosity or vindictive spirit. It is my sympathy 
with the oppressed and the wronged, that are as good as 
you and as precious in the sight of God. . . . Mr. Val- 
landigham. Who are your advisers in this movement ? Mr. 
Brown. I cannot answer that. I have numerous sym- 
pathizers throughout the entire North. ... I want you 
to understand, Gentlemen, (to the reporter of the Herald) 
— you may report that — I want you to understand that I 
respect the rights of the poorest and the weakest of the 
colored people oppressed by the slavery system, just as much 
as I do those of the most wealthy and powerful. This is the 
idea that has moved me, and that alone. We expected no 
reward except the satisfaction of endeavoring to do for those 
in distress and greatly oppressed as we would be done by. 
The cry of distress of the oppressed is my reason, and the 
only thing that prompted me to come here. ... I wish 
to say further, that you had better, all you people of the 
South, prepare yourselves for a settlement of this question 
that must come up for settlement sooner than you are pre- 
pared for it. The sooner you are prepared, the better. 
You may dispose of me very easily. I am nearly disposed 
of now; but this question is still to be settled, this negro 
question, I mean ; the end of that is not yet." ^ 

With such eloquence Brown won the heart of the North 
and made of himself a hero, whose trial, following within a 
few weeks, became in reality a trial of the antislavery North 
by the state courts of Virginia. Every act done, every word 
spoken in the drama in the Charlestown Court House was 
reported and read throughout the country, the prisoner's 
The Liberator, October 28, 1859. 



JOHN BROWN 5 

perfect frankness in admitting everything, his uniform 
courtesy to the court, his patience while lying on the bed of 
pain before judge and jury, with many wounds still gaping 
and fresh, and finally the undue haste of the whole procedure. 
Neither for securing sympathetic counsel for the accused 
nor for summoning distant witnesses was ample time allowed. 
All was haste. 

When, on November first, after a verdict of " guilty of 
treason and conspiring and advising with slaves and others 
to rebel, and murder in the first degree" had been suddenly 
reached, Brown was brought into court and asked if he could 
give any reasons why sentence should not be passed upon 
him, though surprised and confused, he spoke as follows: 
''In the first place I deny everything but what I have all 
along admitted, the design on my part to free the slaves. 
I intended certainly to have made a clean thing of that mat- 
ter, as I did last winter when I went into Missouri and there 
took slaves without the snapping of a gun on either side, 
moved them through the country, and finally left them in 
Canada. I designed to have done the same thing again on 
a larger scale. That was all I intended. I never did intend 
murder or treason or the destruction of property, or to incite 
or excite slaves to rebellion or to make insurrection. I have 
another objection, and that is, it is unjust that I should suffer 
such a penalty. Had I interfered in the manner which I ad- 
mit has been fairly proved (for I admire the truthfulness and 
candor of the greater portion of the witnesses who have 
testified in this case), had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, 
the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or in behalf 
of any of their friends, either father, mother, brother, sister, 
wife, or children, or any of that class, and suffered and 
sacrificed what I have in this interference, it would have been 
all right, and every man in this court would have deemed it 
an act worthy of reward rather than of punishment. 

''This court acknowledges, as I suppose, the vahdity of 



6 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

the law of God. I see a book kissed here, which I suppose 
to be the Bible or at least the New Testament. That teaches 
me that all things 'whatsoever I would that men should do 
to me, I should do even so to them.' It teaches me further 
to remember those that are in bonds as bound with them. 
I endeavored to act upon that instruction. I say that I 
am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter 
of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done, 
as I have always freely admitted I have done, in behalf of 
His despised poor, was not wrong, but right. Now if it be 
deemed necessary that I should forfeit my Ufe for the fur- 
therance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further 
with the blood of my children, and with the blood of millions 
in this slave country, whose rights are disregarded by wicked, 
cruel, and unjust enactments, I submit — so let it be 
done. . . ." ^ 

For one month more, till the day of execution. Brown lan- 
guished in prison, denying himself to all callers and inter- 
viewers, refusing the hundreds of requests for his autograph, 
devoting himself, rather, almost entirely to voluminous 
correspondence. Many of his letters were published, and 
for loftiness of thought, appropriateness of diction and senti- 
ment, and sweetness and tenderness of spuit, they may be 
ranked among the world's great letters. Where did the 
untutored man learn the English language? Where, if 
not in the same school as the great War President, Abraham 
Lincoln ? Letters of sympathy were answered, gifts acknowl- 
edged, the care of his wife and family recommended to friends, 
a "perfectly practical" education outlined for his children. 
In many letters he sought to comfort his family. ''Dear 
wife and children — every one," he wrote; "I will begin 
by saying that I have in some degree recovered from my 
wounds, but that I am quite weak in my back and sore about 

* The American Conflict, by Horace Greeley, Hartford, 1864-1866, 
1,294. 



JOHN BROWN 7 

my left kidney. My appetite has been quite good for most 
of the time since I was hurt. I am supphed with almost 
everything I could desire to make me comfortable, and the 
little I do lack (some articles of clothing which I lost) I may 
perhaps get again. I am besides quite cheerful, having 
(as I trust) the peace of God, which 'passeth all understand- 
ing' to 'rule in my heart,' and the testimony (in some degree) 
of a good conscience that I have lived not altogether in vain. 
I can trust God with both the time and the manner of my 
death, beUeving, as I now do, that for me at this tune to seal 
my testimony (for God and humanity) with my blood, will 
do vastly more toward advancing the cause I have earnestly 
endeavored to support than all I have done in all my life 
before. I beg of you all meekly and quietly to submit to 
this, not feehng yourself in the least degraded on that account. 
Remember, dear wife and children all, that Jesus of Naza- 
reth suffered a most excruciating death on the cross as a 
felon, under the most aggravating circumstances. Think, 
also, of the prophets and apostles and Christians of former 
days, who went through greater tribulation than you or I ; 
and (try to) be reconciled. May God Almighty comfort all 
your hearts, and soon wipe away all tears from your eyes. 
To Him be endless praise. Think, too, of the crushed 
mdlUons who have no comforter. I charge you all never 
(ui all your trials) to forget the griefs of 'the poor that cry 
and of them that have hone to comfort them.' . . . I greatly 
long to hear from some one of you and to learn anything 
that in any way affects your welfare. I sent you ten dollars 
the other day. Did you get it ? I have also endeavored to 
stir up Christian friends to visit and write to you in your 
deep affliction. I have no doubt that some of them, at least, 
will heed the call. Write to me, care of Captain John Avis, 
Charlestown, Jefferson County, Virginia. 'Finally, my 
beloved,' 'be of good comfort.' May all your names be 
written in the ' Lamb's Book of Life,' may you all have the 



8 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

purifjdng and sustaining influence of the Christian rehgion, 
is the earnest prayer of your affectionate husband and 
father, 

John Brown. 

''P.S. I cannot remember a night so dark as to have 
hindered the coming day, nor a storm so furious and dreadful 
as to prevent the return of warm sunshine and a cloudless 
sky. But, beloved ones, do remember that this is not your 
rest, that in this world you have no abiding place or continu- 
ing city. To God and His infinite mercy I always commend 
you. J.B." 

Slaveholding and slavery-supporting clergjnmen of the 
community, seeking to comfort him, he summarily repulsed. 
To one who sought to harmonize Christianity and slavery 
he replied: "My dear sir, you know nothing about Chris- 
tianity ; you will have to learn the A B C's in the lesson of 
Christianity, as I find you entirely ignorant of the meaning 
of the word. I, of course, respect you as a gentleman, but 
it is as a heathen gentleman." Here the argument closed.^ 

The day of execution was Friday, December 2. Brown 
stepped from the jail with "radiant countenance" ; passing 
a little negro baby he stooped tenderly and kissed it ; at a 
negro woman, exclaiming as he passed, "God bless you, old 
man ! I wish I could help you, but I can't," he looked in 
silence with tears in his eyes. Attended by militia he rode 
alone in a wagon to the gray stubble field on the edge of the 
city, the place of execution, where thousands of soldiers were 
drawn up in waiting. "It has been a characteristic of me 
from infancy not to suffer from physical fear. I have suf- 
fered a thousand times more from bashfulness than from 
fear," he declared on the journey. Almost his last words 

1 The American Conflict, by Horace Greeley, Hartford, 1864-1866, 
I, 296. 



JOHN BROWN 9 

were to his jailer : " I have no words to thank you for all your 
kindness to me." ^ Thus the felon's death was turned to 
triumph, and in the North the same spirit of triumph marked 
the many celebrations in honor of the event, mingling with 
the tone of sadness and transforming it.^ 

Frank Leslie's Illustrated Weekly published a striking 
full-page picture of the execution. At a public meeting in 
Cleveland the martyr's words were hung up in banners : 
"John Brown, the hero of 1859," ''Remember those that are 
in bonds as bound with them," "If I had interfered in behalf 
of the great, the wealthy, and the wise, no one would have 
blamed me," "I do not think I can better serve the cause I 
love so much than to die for it." In Newburyport, Massa- 
chusetts, stores were draped in mourning and bells tolled; 
in West Newbury a factory draped ; in Amesbury the flags 
of the mills kept at half-mast, the bells tolled, many stores 
and offices draped, and a public meeting held in the evening ; 
in Haverhill, Georgetown, Danvers, and Lynn there were the 
same demonstrations. In Albany, New York, one hundred 
guns were fired. In the Massachusetts State Senate a 
motion to adjourn at the hour of execution was lost by only 
three votes. Thousands of Brov/n's pictures were sold, and 
also thousands of copies of his prison letters bound in pam- 
phlet form. Within four weeks Redpath's life of Brown was 
out, and in Massachusetts alone twenty thousand copies 
were quickly sold. Numberless church services and 
public meetings were held, called by the abolition societies 
"for the furtherance of the antislavery cause, and renewedly 
to consecrate themselves to the patriotic and Christian work 
of effecting the abolition of that most dangerous, unnatural, 
cruel, and impious system of slavery, which is the fruitful 
i source of all our sectional heartburnings and conflicts." 

1 The American Coyiflid, by Horace Greeley, Hartford, 1864-1866, 1, 296. 
^ In all, seven of the conspirators were executed, some two weeks aftel 
Brown and some as late as March of the next year. 



10 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

At one of these meetings in Boston William Lloyd Garrison 
passionately cried : ''I do not rise on this occasion to define 
my position {laughter) ; that I believe Virginia and the South 
clearly understand, and I as clearly understand theirs. 
Between us there is an 'irrepressible conflict' {applause); 
and I am for carrying it on until it is finished in victory or 
in death {renewed applause). For thirty years I have been 
endeavoring to effect by peaceful, moral, and religious in- 
strumentalities, the abolition of American slavery ; and if 
possible, I hate slavery thirty times more than when I began, 
and I am thirty times more, if possible, an abolitionist of the 
most uncompromising character {loud applause). ... A 
word or two in regard to the characteristics of John Brown. 
He was of the old Puritan stock, a Cromwellian, who believed 
in God and at the same time in 'keeping his powder dry.' 
He beheved in Hhe sword of the Lord and of Gideon,' and 
acted accordingly. Herein I differed widely from him. 
But certainly he was no infidel, oh, no ! How it would have 
added to the fiendish malignity of the New York Observer, 
if John Brown had only been an infidel, evangelically speak- 
ing ! The man who brands him as a traitor is a calumnia- 
tor {applause). The man who says that his object was to 
promote murder, or insurrection, or rebellion, is, in the lan- 
guage of the Apostle, 'a Har, and the truth is not in him.' 
John Brown meant to effect if possible a peaceful exodus 
from Virginia. But, it is asked, ' Did he not have stored up 
a large supply of Sharp's rifles and spears ? What did they 
mean ? ' Nothing offensive, nothing aggressive. Only this : 
he designed getting as many slaves as he could to join him, 
and then putting into their hands those instruments of self- 
defense. But, mark you, self-defense ; not in standing their 
ground, but in their retreat to the mountains; or in their 
flight to Canada ; not with any design to shed the blood or 
harm the hair of a single slaveholder in the state of Virginia, 
if a conflict could be avoided. . . . See the ferocious spirit 



JOHN BROWN 11 

of the Virginians in their treatment of the living and the 
dead. Let me give you a single specimen, as narrated by 
an eyewitness. This is Southern testimony. 'The dead 
lay on the streets and in the river and were subjected to every 
indignity that a wild and madly excited people could heap 
upon them. Curses were freely uttered against them and 
kicks and blows inflicted upon them. The large mulatto 
that shot Mr. Turner was lying in the gutter in front of the 
arsenal, with a horrible wound in the neck, and though dead 
and gory, vengeance was unsatisfied, and many, as they 
ran sticks into his wound, or beat him with them, wished 
that he had a thousand lives, that all of them might be 
forfeited in expiation and avengement of the foul deed he 
had committed. Leeman lay upon a rock in the river and 
was made target for the practice of those who had captured 
Sharp's rifles in the affray. Shot after shot was fired at him, 
and when tired of this sport, a man waded out to where he 
lay and set him up in grotesque attitude, and finally pushed 
him off, and he floated down the stream.' Oh ! the spirit 
engendered by slavery ! Is there anything like it upon 
earth? . . . 

"Was John Brown justified in this attempt? Yes, if 
Washington was in his, if Warren and Hancock were in 
theirs. If men are justified in striking a blow for freedom, 
when the question is one of a threepenny tax on tea, I say 
they are a thousand times more justified, when it is to save 
fathers, mothers, wives, and children from the slave coffle 
and the auction block and to restore to them their God- 
given rights {loud applause). Was John Brown justified in 
interfering in behalf of the slave population of Virginia, to 
secure their freedom and independence? Yes, if Lafayette 
was justified in interfering to help our revolutionary fathers. 
If Kosciusko, if Pulaski, if Steuben, if de Kalb, if all who 
joined them from abroad were justified in that act, then 
John Brown was incomparably more so. . . , 



12 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

''Who instigated John Brown ? Let us see. It must have 
been Patrick Henry of Virginia, — ' Give me hberty or give 
me death.' Why do they not dig up his bones and give them 
to the consuming fire, to show their abhorrence of his mem- 
ory ? It must have been Thomas Jefferson, another Vhgin- 
ian, who said of the bondage of the Virginia slave, that 'one 
hour of it is fraught with more misery than ages of that 
which our fathers rose in rebelhon to oppose,' and w^ho 
as the author of the Declaration of Independence, proclaimed 
it to be a 'self-evident truth, that all men are created equal 
and endowed by their Creator with an inalienable right to 
liberty.' Beyond all question it must have been Virginia 
herself, who by her coat of arms, with its terrible motto. 
Sic semper tyrarmis, asserts the right of the oppressed to 
trample their oppressors beneath their feet, and if necessary, 
to consign them to a bloody grave." ^ 

Victor Hugo, in the following letter to a London news- 
paper, spoke the sentiment of enlightened Europe and re- 
echoed the American abolitionists : "Brown, stretched upon 
a truckle-bed, with six half-closed wounds, a gun-shot wound 
in the arm, one in his loins, two in the chest, two in the head, 
almost bereft of hearing, bleeding through the mattress, the 
spirits of his two dead sons attending him ; his four fellow 
prisoners crawling around him; Stephens with four saber 
wounds ; justice in a hurry to have done with the case ; 
an attorney. Hunter, demanding that it be dispatched with 
sharp speed; a judge, Parker, assenting; the defense cut 
short; scarcely any delay allowed; forged or garbled ac- 
counts put in evidence ; the witnesses for the prisoner shut 
out ; the defense clogged ; two guns, loaded with grape, 
brought into the court, with an order to the jailer to shoot 
the prisoners in case of an attempt at rescue ; forty minutes' 
deliberation ; three sentences to death. I affirm on my honor, 
that all this took place, not in Turkey, but in America." ^ 

1 The Liberator, December 16, 1859. 
* The Liberator, December 31, 1859. 



70HN BROWN 13 

The deeds of the abolitionists supplemented their words. 
Said George L. Stearns of Boston: ''From first to last I 
understood John Brown to be a man opposed to slavery, 
and as such, that he would take every opportunity to free 
slaves where he could ; I did not know in what way ; I only 
knew that from the fact of his having done it in Missouri 
in the instance referred to; I furnished him with money 
because I considered him as one who would be of use in case 
such troubles arose as had arisen previously in Kansas; 
that was my object in furnishing the money ; I did not ask 
him what he was to do with it." Samuel G. Howe, a physi- 
cian of the highest professional and social standing in Boston, 
said: ''I contributed to his aid at various times." ''His 
aid — in what way ? " "In the same way that I contributed 
to the aid of other antislavery men ; men who give up their 
occupations, their industry, to write papers or to deliver 
lectures, or otherwise to propagate antislavery sentiments. 
I give as much money every year as I can possibly afford." ^ 

These radicals cared little whether or not Brown was 
insane ; they were ready for a hero, and swept on by the full 
tide of excitement they gave Uttle or no heed to the most 
^significant affida^dts pubhshed by Brown's counsel when he 
was struggling for delay in the trial. Nineteen persons 
swore to statements going to show Brown's insanity for 
several years past, and proving beyond a doubt the extraordi- 
nary fact of the insanity of no fewer than thirteen of his near 
relatives, — a grandmother, two aunts, an uncle, a sister, five 
cousins, two sons, and a niece ; all of which, when added to 
Brown's unusual language and behavior as to slavery, the 
character of the expedition, and the strange constitution 
found among his papers, which he had apparently drawn up 
in anticipation of a new government to be established, ^ 
would certainly seem to render belief in his monomania at 

1 U. S. Senate Reports, 36 Cong., 1 Sess., No. 278. 
* See p. 21, note. 



14 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

least plausible. But madman or no madman, thousands 
hailed him hero.^ 

Southern radicals were as much wrought up as those in 
the North, but with a passion all their own — the deed must 
not be allowed to happen again; there must be no more 
John Browns. It was no mere abstract question, but a most 
serious practical situation which now confronted the men 
and women of the South ; saneness and sobriety of judgment 
seemed almost out of the question, and small wonder that a 
distorted notion of self-preservation and an angry debate 
with the North on slavery carried them away. "Do you 
read your Bible, Mrs. Childs?" hotly inquired Mrs. Mason 
of Virginia, the wife of a United States Senator, of a prom- 
inent Northern abolitionist. ''If you do, read there : 'Woe 
unto you, hypocrites,' and take to yourself, with twofold 
damnation, that terrible sentence, for, rest assured, in the 
day of judgment it shall be more tolerable for those thus 
scathed by the awful words of the Son of God than for you. 
You would soothe with sisterly and motherly care the hoary- 
headed murderer of Harper's Ferry ! A man whose aim 
and intention was to incite the horrors of a servile war — 
to condemn women of your own race, ere death closed their 
eyes on their sufferings from violence and outrage, to see their 
husbands and fathers murdered, their children butchered, 
the ground strewn with the brains of their babes. The ante- 
cedents of Brown's band proved them to have been the off- 
scourings of the earth; and what would have been their 
fate had they found as many sympathizers in Virginia as 
they seem to have in Massachusetts. Now, compare your- 
self with those your sympathy would devote to such ruth- 
less men, and say, on your word of honor, which has never 
been broken, would you stand by the bed of an old negro, ; 
dying of a hopeless disease, to alleviate his suffering as far 
as human aid could ? Have you watched the last lingering 

^ The Boston Daily Advertiser, December 2, 1859. 



JOHN BROWN 15 

illness of a consumptive, to soothe, as far as in you lay, the 
inevitable fate? Do you grieve with those near you, even 
though their sorrows resulted from their own misconduct? 
Did you ever sit up until the 'wee hours' to complete a dress 
for a motherless child, that she might appear on Christmas 
day in a new one, along with her more fortunate companions ? 
We do these things and more for our servants, and why? 
Because we endeavor to do our duty in that state of life it 
has pleased God to place us. . . . You reverence Brown 
for his clemency to his prisoners ! Prisoners ! and how taken ? 
Unsuspecting workmen, going to their daily tasks, unarmed 
gentlemen, taken from their bed at the dead hour of night 
by six men doubly and trebly armed. Suppose he had hurt 
a hair of their heads, do you suppose any of the band of des- 
peradoes would have left the engine house alive ? And did 
he not know that his treatment of them was his only hope 
of life then or of clemency afterwards?" 

Without noticing the Southern woman's natural fear of a 
servile insurrection, Mrs. Childs replied: ''I have no dis- 
position to retort upon you the twofold damnation to which 
you consign me. On the contrary, I sincerely wish you well, 
both in this world and the next. If the anathema proved a 
safety valve to your boihng spirit, it did some good to you, 
while it fell harmless upon me. . . . You refer me to the 
Bible, from which you quote the favorite text of slaveholders, 
'Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear ; not only 
to the good and gentle, but also to the fro ward.' 1 Peter 
2 : 18. Abolitionists also have their favorite texts, to some 
of which I would call your attention. 'Remember those 
that are in bonds as bound with them.' Hebrews 13:3. 
' Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is 
escaped from his master unto thee. He shall dwell with thee 
where it liketh him best. Thou shalt not oppress him.' 
Deuteronomy 23: 15, 16. . . . I would especially commend to 
slave owners the following portions of that volume, wherein 



16 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

you say God has revealed the duty of masters. 'Masters, 
give unto your servants that which is just and equal, knowing 
that you also have a Master in Heaven.' Colossians 4:1. 
'Neither be ye called masters, for one is your master, even 
Christ, and all ye are brethren.' Matthew 23 : 8-10. 
'Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye 
even so to them.' Matthew 7:12. 'Woe unto him that 
useth his neighbor's service without wages, and giveth him 
not for his work.' Jeremiah 22 : 13. . . . 

"If the appropriateness of these texts is not apparent, I 
will try to make it so, by evidence drawn entirely from 
Southern sources. . . . The universal rule of the slave 
states is that ' the child follows the condition of its mother.' 
This is an index to many things. Marriages between white 
and colored people are forbidden by law ; yet a very large 
number of the slaves are white or yellow. When Lafayette 
visited this country in his old age, he said he w^as very much 
struck by the great change in the colored population in Vir- 
ginia ; that in the time of the Revolution nearly all the house- 
hold slaves were black, but when he returned to America he 
found very few of them black. The advertisements in 
Southern newspapers often describe runaway slaves that 
'pass themselves for white people.' Sometimes they are 
described as having ' straight black hair, blue eyes, and clear 
complexion.' This would not be unless their fathers, grand- 
fathers, and great-grandfathers had been white men. But 
as their mothers were slaves, the law pronounces them slaves, 
subject to be sold on the auction block whenever the neces- 
sities or consciences of the masters or mistresses require it. 
The sale of one's own children, brothers or sisters, has an 
ugly aspect to those who are unaccustomed to it ; obviously, 
it cannot have a good moral influence, that law and custom 
should render licentiousness a profitable vice. 

"Throughout the slave states the testimony of no colored 
person, bond or free, can be received against a white man. 



JOHN BROWN 17 

You have some laws which on the face of them would seem 
to restrain men from murdering or mutilating slaves; but 
they are rendered nearly null by the law I have cited. Any 
drunken master, overseer, or patrol may go into the negro 
cabins and commit what outrages he pleases with perfect 
impunity, if no white person is present who chooses to wit- 
ness against him. North Carolina and Georgia have a 
large loophole of escape even if white persons are present, 
when murder is committed. A law to punish persons for 
'maliciously killing a slave' has this remarkable qualification, 
'always providing that this act shall not extend to any slave 
dying of moderate correction.' We at the North find it 
difficult to understand how moderate punishment can cause 
death. . . . 

*'By yom- laws all a slave's earnings belong to his master. 
He can neither receive donations nor transmit property. 
Your laws also systematically aim at keeping the minds of 
the colored people in the most abject state of ignorance. If 
white people attempt to teach them to read or write, they 
are punished by imprisonment and fines ; if they attempt 
to teach others, they are punished with from twenty to 
thirty-nine lashes. . . . 

''The reliable source of information is the advertisements 
in the Southern newspapers. In the North Carolina 
(Raleigh) Standard Mr. Micajah Ricks advertises a 'negro 
woman and two children. A few days before she went off, 
I burned her with a hot iron on the left side of the face. I 
tried to make the letter M.' In the Natchez Courier Mr. J. P. 
Ashford advertises a runaway negro girl 'with a good many 
teeth missing and the letter A branded on her cheek and 
forehead.' In the Lexington (Kentucky) Observer Mr. 
William Overstreet advertises a runaway negro 'with his 
left eye out, scars from a disk on his left arm, and much 
scarred with a whip.' I might quote from hundreds of such 
advertisements. 



18 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

''Another source of information is afforded by your fugi- 
tives from justice, with many of whom I have conversed 
freely. . . . 

"Another source of information is furnished by emanci- 
pated slave holders. . . . 

"Looking at the system of slavery in the hght of all this 
evidence, do you candidly think that we deserve 'twofold 
damnation' for detesting it? Can you not believe that we 
hate the system and yet be truly your friends? I make 
allowance for the excited state of your mind and for the 
prejudice induced by education. I do not care to change 
your opinion of me; but do wish that you would be per- 
suaded to examine this subject dispassionately for the sake 
of the prosperity of Virginia, and the welfare of unborn 
generations, both white and colored. For thirty years 
abolitionists have been trying to reason with slaveholders 
through the press and in the Halls of Congress. Their ef- 
forts, though directed to the masters only, have been met 
with violence and abuse equal to that poured on the head of 
John Brown. Yet surely we, as a portion of the Union in- 
volved in the expense, degeneracy, the danger and the dis- 
grace of this iniquitous and fatal system, have a right to 
speak about it and a right to be heard also. . . . 

"To the personal questions you ask me, I will reply in the 
name of .'all the women of New England. It would be ex- 
tremely difficult to find any woman in our villages who does 
not sew for the poor and watch with the sick, whenever oc- 
casion requires. We pay our domestics generous wages, 
with which they can purchase as many Christmas gowns as 
they please, a process far better for their characters as well 
as our own, than to receive their clothing as a charity, after 
being deprived of just payment for their labor. I have never 
known an instance where the pangs of maternity did not 
meet with requisite assistance ; and here at the North, after 
we have helped the mothers we do not sell the babies. I 



JOHN BROWN 19 

really believe what you state concerning the kindness of many 
Virginia matrons ; but, after all, the best that can be done in 
that way is a poor equivalent for the perpetual wrong done 
to the slave, and the terrible liabihties to which they are 
always subject. Kind masters and mistresses among you 
are merely lucky accidents. If any one chooses to be a 
brutal despot, your laws and customs give him complete 
power to do so ." ^ 

Drastic action on the part of the South attended the angry 
discussion. Stating its attitude toward the presence in 
their midst of any detested Yankee from John Brown's 
country, the Atlanta Confederacy declared that they regarded 
every man in their midst as an enemy to the institutions of 
the South who did not declare boldly that he or she believed 
African slavery a social, moral, and political blessing ; whether 
born at the South or at the North, any person holding other 
than these sentiments was unsound and should be requested 
to leave the country. From every one a confession of faith 
on slavery was sought. ''Beecher said that he would preach 
the same doctrines in Virginia as in Massachusetts," ex- 
claimed a Southerner in Congress, two weeks after Brown's 
death; '^I ask you why you do not come on?" ''I will 
answer the gentleman if he will permit me," quickly retorted 
a Northerner. ''I will tell the gentleman why Mr. Beecher 
would not preach in Virginia; because liberty of speech is 
denied in the South, and if he were to go there he would get 
a coat of tar and feathers." ''Yes, sir," assented the South- 
erner; ''not only would he be denied liberty of speech but 
he would be denied personal liberty also and would be hung 
higher than Haman." On the last day of the year 1859 
twelve families, including thirty-nine persons, arrived in 
Cincinnati, Ohio, from Berea, Madison County, Kentucky, 
whence they had been forcibly expelled for abolitionism. 
Madison County, near the center of the state, had a popu- 

1 The Liberator, December 31, 1859. 



20 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

lation of fifteen thousand people, one third of whom were 
slaves ; the largest town, Berea, was an antislavery center 
under the influence of Rev. John G. Fee, who had organized 
several churches in the vicinity, from membership in all of 
which sympathizers with slavery were excluded. There was 
a seminary in which antislavery was openly taught, a school, 
supported by pubUc money, for children of all colors, and an 
abolition postmaster who regularly handled abolition mail 
from the North. Opposition to slavery, moral opposition 
and that alone, moved the community. The fatal sixteenth 
of October arrived, and Fee, then in New York, was reported 
as having said that he sympathized with Brown and that 
John Browns were needed in Kentucky. Then came a public 
meeting of outraged slaveholders, the inevitable vigilance 
committee, and the abolitionists of Berea had to go'. The 
Governor of the state, to whom in their trouble they ap- 
pealed, gave them no aid. 

James Powers, a stonecutter at work on the new Capitol 
building at Columbia, South Carolina, was arrested for 
seditious speech in regard to Brown and slavery, taken before 
the mayor and committed to prison, whence he was dragged 
by a mob, whipped, tarred and feathered, and sent North. 
In all its details the story was widely heralded in such papers 
as the New York Tribune, the New York Evening Post, and 
the New York Independent. James Crangale, who suffered 
a like fate in Augusta, Gp"^rgia, finally reached New York 
to pubhsh his story in the same way. Small H. Fisk, a shoe 
dealer in Savannah, Georgia, and a native of Massachusetts, 
was charged with expressing general abolition sentiments 
and with reading one evening to some negroes in his store. 
He was called out of the store at night, gagged before he 
could make resistance, and driven outside the city, where he 
vras tarred and feathered. The Neivs of the city added, 
"Not a spot of his skin was left visible, and his hair was 
trimmed close to his head." A peddler of fruit trees and 



JOHN BROWN 21 

shrubbery from Rochester, New York, driven from Asheville, 
North CaroUna, was hauled before a great pubhc meeting at 
Knoxville, Tennessee, and after inflammatory speeches by 
prominent men was given three days in which to get out. 
Two luckless men from Savannah, Georgia, with their heads 
shaved on one side, arrived in New York, and later to the 
same place came two young ladies from Richmond, Virginia, 
where they had lost their positions as school-teachers. A 
book agent was arrested in Alabama for selling Fleetwood's 
Life of Christ and was brought before the Methodist Episcopal 
Conference for judgment; the report of this body read as 
follows : ''We have examined this man's case. We find no 
evidence to convict him with tampering with slaves, but as he 
is from the North and engaged in selling a book published 
in the North, we have a right to suspect him of being an 
abolitionist, and we, therefore, recommend, in order to 
guard ourselves against possible danger, that he be immedi- 
ately conducted by the military out of this county into the 
next adjoining." A single issue of a local Florida paper, 
January, 1860, contained three editorial notices to the public 
to watch out for certain suspected Northerners; while in 
Richmond, Virginia, the Young Men's Christian Association 
with much bravado withdrew a previous invitation to Bayard 
Taylor, because of his connection with the editorial staff of 
the unendurable New York Tribune, to deliver a lecture in 
Richmond under its auspices. 

This was the feeling in every Southern community ; sus- 
picion constantly attended a Northerner in the South, he had 
no freedom of speech or action, he was not wanted, neither 
was he safe. Thus determined were the slaveholders to 
guard against more John Browns.^ It was a natural position. 

^ The Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the 
United States, found among Brown's papers, was in one sense a justifica- 
tion of the South in this position. This document sketched a government 
very similar to that of the United States, but spoke of slavery as the cause 



22 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

There were those more conservative Southerners who ridi- 
culed Governor Wise as ''General Fussation" for keeping so 
many thousand militia at Harper's Ferry for four weeks and 
more at an expense to the state of $200,000 ; they deemed 
the display mere politics, designed to make the Governor 
President. But the critics could not stay the common 
hostihty toward Northern people. Throughout the year 
1860 hundreds of luckless people from the free states were 
expelled from the slave country with more or less violence, 
until the matter became an issue in the presidential cam- 
paign.^ 

By formal state law in Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, 
Alabama, and Texas, copies of Northern newspapers, such as 
the New York Tribune, the New York Christian Advocate, the 
Albany Evening Journal, the Springfield Republican, and 
Harper^ s Weekly, upon being received in the local post offices 
were burned by the postmasters, and to this outrage the 
pliant administration at Washington offered no objection be- 
yond informing the Southerners that before they destroyed 
the papers they must examine them copy by copy and not 
burn all issues because of one. Southern students, resident in 
the North, were affected by the prevailing excitement. The 
departure southward of over two hundred medical students 
from Philadelphia, possibly for a regular vacation, though 
this contingency was never mentioned, was widely heralded 
south of the Ohio River as a sign of the times; passing 
through Richmond they listened to bombastic Governor 
Wise in a most fiery speech, filled with praise for shaking the 
dust of the unfriendly North from their feet and with denun- 
ciation of John Brown's land. In Missouri, the legislature 

of the constitution, spoke of the "enemy," and "confiscated property" 
given up to the common store, of "prisoners," of those who gave up slaves 
"voluntarily" and of the "neutrals." This was a menace which Brown's 
words in prison could not assuage. See U. S. Senate Reports, 36 Cong., 
1 Sess., No. 278. 
» See pp. 215-217. 



JOHN BROWN 23 

refused to the antislavery Methodist Episcopal Church a 
charter for a university, to be located at the state capital; 
they favored education, but not the antislavery kind. 

A favorite threat concerned commercial intercourse. As 
is well known, the South in this regard was dependent on the 
North; in the words of Governor Wise everything in the 
South came from the Yankees, from the churns in the dairies 
to the clocks in the parlor. But public meetings were now 
called to advocate direct trade with Europe.^ State legis- 
latures considered bills to encourage such trade by tax ex- 
emption, while at the same time heavier taxes were to be 
levied on the Northern traveling salesmen ; prominent men 
appeared in homespun, and to cap the climax the editor of 
a Georgian paper published a white and black list of New 
York merchants, proslavery and antislavery, with the 
former of whom it was recommended that the South should 
trade and should taboo the latter. When the editor later 
appeared in New York to correct his lists, the vials of Horace 
Greeley's wrath could no longer be contained ; to be kicked 
into the nastiest part of the gutter was the only fate suitable 
for the contemptible blackmailer. Yet scores of New York 
merchants afTected to welcome the Southerner and with 
many favors sought a place on the white list. Perhaps 
the success of the movement was the secret spring of the 
Tribune editor's outburst, for the commercial element of the 
city was strongly pro-Southern and remained so throughout 
the year. 

A veiled and indefinite purpose, a vague threat, perhaps, 
was couched in the immediate formation of local military 
companies in many Southern towns, where daily and weekly 
drills and tournaments were common. 

In the Southern legislatures a determined effort was made 
to give political support to Virginia. Scarcely was John 

^ Southern commercial conventions had long agitated this question, 
but had never accomplished anything. 



24 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

Brown dead when South CaroHna passed the following 
resolutions: "Whereas, the state of South Carolina, by her 
ordinance of a.d. 1852, affirmed her right to secede from the 
Confederacy whenever the occasion should arise, justifying 
her, in her judgment, in taking that step ; and in the resolu- 
tion adopted by her convention declared that she forbore 
the immediate exercise of that right, from considerations 
of expediency only; and whereas, more than seven years 
have elapsed since that convention adjourned, and in the 
intervening tim.e the assaults upon the institution of slavery 
and upon the rights and equality of the Southern states, 
have increasingly continued, with increasing violence, and 
in new and alarming forms, be it therefore, First, Resolved, 
That the slaveholding states should have a convention for 
united action. . . . Third, That delegates especially be 
sent to Virginia to express to the authorities of that state the 
cordial sympathies of the people of South Carolina with the 
people of Virginia, and their earnest desire to unite with them 
in measures of common defense." 

Upon the receipt of this call, bitter contests were precipi- 
tated in the various states, which ran for a few weeks and 
ended in the defeat of the proposed convention; not one 
state followed the lead of South Carolina. The Carolinian 
Commissioner made long speeches both before the legislature 
and before the people of Virginia, breathing defiance to the 
North and by every art of the orator attempting to stir the 
Virginians to action. But he failed. The sober, second 
thought of the people, though greatly agitated, was not yet 
ready for extremes. 

Proslavery political leaders, framing their views pre- 
paratory to the coming presidential campaign, also fell vic- 
tims to the prevailing excitement and clothed their senti- 
ments in language unusually radical. The following typical 
resolutions were framed in Georgia on the day that Brown 
died: ''We, a portion of the citizens of Mcintosh County, 



JOHN BROWN 25 

believing that a fearful crisis in our national existence 
is at hand, and that the attempt to raise an insurrection 
at Harper's Ferry is but a faint index of the impending evil 
that threatens the slaveholding states, deem it the duty of 
every citizen to think calmly, resolve with firmness, and act 
with decision, do announce to the Union and to the whole 
world the views we entertain, and the course we think ought 
to be pursued. Resolved, That by the laws both of God and 
man, the slave is the property of his master, and that by the 
constitution of the United States the general government is 
bound to protect us in the possession of this species of prop- 
erty, both by statute and treaty. Resolved, That those 
states that encourage or permit the abolitionists to devise 
plans to rob us of our slaves, have violated and are still 
violating the constitution of the United States. Resolved, 
That, although we would be glad to see our Union go on 
prospering and to prosper, yet recent events show that our 
rights are not only disregarded but are assailed, and we are 
threatened with all the desolation and horrors attendant 
upon a servile war. Resolved, That we call upon the non- 
slaveholding states to carry out in good faith the constitution 
of the Union, by putting down the abolitionists and their 
abettors, and if they persist in their hostility to our institu- 
tions we feel it a duty to ourselves and a duty to our institu- 
tions to sever our connections with them. Resolved, That 
the greatest curse that has ever befallen the South was to 
submit to any compromise. That in every compromise that 
we have made we have been defrauded out of our just rights. 
That in the future we intend to declare to the Northern 
states our rights, and these rights we intend to maintain, if it 
costs our heart's last drop of blood. That we recommend to 
our delegates to the Charleston convention to contend for 
the rights of the South ; and if voted down by the Northern 
states, that the Southern delegates withdraw, and call upon 
the South to call a convention to nominate candidates for 



26 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

president and vice president, to be run by the people of the 
South, pledged to stand up and defend our Southern rights. 
Resolved, That the cause of Virginia is the cause of the South, 
and that we stand ready and willing to march to her aid or 
any other Southern state when assailed." ^ 

The conservative classes in the North, used from long 
custom to taking their principles from the Southern radicals, 
now stuck fast to their old friends and roundly denounced 
John Brown and all his followers ; they insisted that slavery 
was right and that the South should not be disturbed and 
goaded into secession. The editor of the Columbus (Ohio) 
Statesman, a prominent Democratic politician and a regular 
attendant at the Methodist Episcopal Church, suddenly 
arose and left the church and vowed that he never would 
return when his pastor in a pubhc discourse spoke of Brown 
as ''one who stepped from the gallows to the portals of 
Heaven" ; for similar reasons six Democrats withdrew from 
a Massachusetts church service. Everywhere churches 
were distraught. In many cities "Union-saving" meetings 
were held, conservative gatherings called to attest anew the 
value of the union of the states, fraternal devotion to the 
Southern members of the Confederacy, a determination to 
do them justice, and undying hatred of John Brown. In 
Lowell, Massachusetts, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, New 
York, Albany, Rochester, etc., slavery was praised. Said 
Mr. Charles 0' Conor, a leader of the New York bar, at a 
meeting in that city : "I insist that negro slavery is not only 
just (hisses and disorder) — I maintain, gentlemen, that 
negro slavery is not unjust, that it is benign in its influence on 
the white man and on the black man ; that it is ordained by 
nature itself ; that it carries with it duties for the black man 
and duties for the white, which duties cannot be performed 
except by the preservation, and if the gentlemen please it, 
the perpetuation of the system of negro slavery." ^ Said 

1 The New York Herald, January 1, 1860. 
» The Liberator, January 20, 1860. 



JOHN BROWN 27 

Caleb Gushing, whom many called the most unscrupulous 
of Northern politicians: "I showed you how under the in- 
fluence of their malign teachings all party action North and 
South was running in the channel of a desperate and deplor- 
able sectionalism, and that above all, here in Massachusetts, 
all the political influences dominant in the state were founded 
upon the single emotion of hate, aye ! hate, treacherous 
ferocious hate of our fellow-citizens in the Southern states. 
Under the influence of this monomania, they have set up in 
this commonwealth a rehgion of hate, aye ! a religion of hate 
such as belongs only to the condemned devils in hell. I say 
it is a religion of hate and blasphemy. Oh God ! that such 
things are in this our day." ^ 

The meeting in Rochester, New York, framed the following 
resolutions: "Whereas, recent events, occurring indifferent 
portions of our common country, have made prominent the 
continued union of the States composing our Confederacy ; 
and whereas it has been thought proper for the citizens of 
Rochester to assemble in public meeting to declare their 
sentiments on this question. Therefore, Resolved, That 
we affirm and reiterate our fealty and attachment to the 
union of these states. . . . Resolved, That in our relations 
with the Southern states, we will, as far as in our power, 
cheerfully accord to them what we claim for ourselves, the 
free and unmolested exercise of our sovereign rights and 
privileges, and will manfully and faithfully aid them in their 
defense against unhallowed and treasonable designs of any 
combination of men. . . . Resolved, That we hold in utter 
disregard and contempt the cant and sneers of all those dis- 
organizing and seditious fanatics who go about the streets 
of our cities and towns, claiming to be wiser than their fathers 
and better than their neighbors, and hold mutinous public 
meetings and secret conclaves, to impress upon the unsus- 
pecting and peaceful of our fellow-citizens the dangerous 

1 The Congressional Globe, 36 Cong., 1 Sess., Vol. I, p. 311. 



28 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

and unholy doctrine that he, who is not an abolitionist, is a 
thief, a robber, and a murderer ; and we hold him morally 
guilty of such crimes, who openly or covertly endeavors to 
incite the slaves of the South to rapine and violence, or 
encourages fanatical emissaries to go forth on the errand of 
promoting such an end. Resolved, That the late insurrec- 
tionary movement of John Brown and those who conspired 
in person with him, in his treasonable and murderous assault 
upon the peaceful citizens of Virginia, has our most un- 
qualified condemnation and severest rebuke, and we consider 
his punishment and that of his confederates not only just 
but demanded both by the offended laws of the country and 
by the magnitude and dangerous tendency of the offense; 
and should a like occasion arise, we pledge ourselves, if need 
be, and to the utmost of our power, in person and with our 
fortunes, to protect and defend the constitutional rights and 
privileges of the South. . . . Resolved, That while we 
revere the teachings from the pulpits of the free states, so 
far as they are confined to the legitimate objects of church 
organization, we consider all interferences from that source, 
with the constitutional rights of our Southern brethren 
touching the institution of slavery not only entirely unwar- 
ranted but calculated to incite disloyal and treasonable 
action, and to engender strife and disaffection. . . ." ^ 

In the opinion of these ultraconservative, proslavery, 
Northern Democrats the true causes and incentives of the 
treasonable acts of Brown and other crazy adventurers were 
the brutal and bloody ''irrepressible conflict" teachings of 
William H. Seward. Combating this view was the unpalat- 
able doctrine, set forth by Ex-President Fillmore in a letter 
to the New York "Union-saving" meeting and for obvious 
reasons not read there. This eminent statesman announced 
it as his belief that the Harper's Ferry episode was the direct 
result of the Civil War in Kansas, and that the principle of 

1 The Congressional Globe, 36 Cong., 1 Sess., Vol. I, p. 296. 



JOHN BROWN 29 

popular sovereignty, as there applied, was the true Pandora 
box to which to trace the flood of evils then threatening to 
overwhelm the constitution and sweep away the foundations 
of the government ; few laws were in his opinion so barren of 
good and so fruitful of evil as the Kansas-Nebraska Act. 

While some of the Southern papers praised the Union 
meetings, many at the same time denounced them as too 
late and as representing only the minority ; what the South 
wanted of the North was not public meetings, processions, 
speeches, and resolutions, but votes. Mere "Union-saving" 
by irresponsible public gatherings, which could easily be 
assembled in large centers of population, was moreover 
glaringly inconsistent with the retention on the statute books 
of the formally enacted personal liberty laws. 
^ To the RepubHcans of the North ''Union-saving" was 
even more ridiculous than to the Southerners. In the first 
place, such meetings were not new. They were held after 
the death of President Taylor, when that President's ap- 
pointees were fighting the new President for the promised 
spoils of office, after the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Law 
and its enforcement, after both the Kansas-Nebraska Act 
and the assault on Senator Sumner, and under Buchanan 
during the struggle over the Lecompton constitution, in each 
case following closely upon offensive acts of the government 
and plainly under the auspices of administration men, who 
pushed them for the purposes of shielding themselves and 
turning public attention to other channels. It was not 
difficult to gather men into a meeting in favor of a popular 
idea (the nearer a truism the better), to officer it with respect- 
able men (the more neutral the better), to get speakers and 
resolution writers, and having all ready, to start the thing in 
motion, then to let the resolutions be for self-evident prop- 
ositions which no man disputed. There was nothing better 
calculated to hide the actual situation than this ''Union- 
saving" device; in its declarations, the real cause of the 



30 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

Brown uprising, the administration policy in Kansas, was 
always passed over. 

The positive declarations of opinion by the Republicans 
concerning Brown and Harper's Ferry, although purposely 
guarded in order to save them from the charge of radical 
abolitionism, were yet well calculated to identify them with 
moderate antislavery. Horace Greeley, in the New York 
Tribune, wrote : "There are eras in which death is not merely 
heroic but beneficent and fruitful. Who shall say that this 
was not John Brown's time to die ? , . . It will be easier 
to die in a good cause, even on the gallows, since John Brown 
has hallowed that mode of exit from the troubles and tempta- 
tions of this mortal existence. Then, as to the ' irrepressible 
conflict,' who does not see that this sacrifice must inevitably 
intensify its progress and hasten its end ? . . . So let us be 
reverently grateful for the privilege of living in a world 
rendered noble by the daring of heroes, the suffering of 
martjTS, among whom let none doubt that history will ac- 
cord an honored niche to old John Brown." WiUiam Cullen 
Bryant, in the New York Evening Post, wrote : "A large part 
of the civilized world will, as a large part of the world does 
already, lay on his tomb the honors of martyrdom, and while 
the honors remain there, his memory will be more terrible to 
slaveholders than his living presence could ever have been, 
because it will bring recruits to his cause who would never 
have served under his banner while he was wielding carnal 
weapons." ^ 

The New York Independent said : ''No man can study the 
demeanor of Brown during his trial, and read his final speech 
to the court, without feeling that with all his errors of judg- 
ment and his fatal, mistake in the mode of his attack upon 
slavery, this forlorn old man is exhibiting a type of heroism 
which the world has hardly seen since Cromwell and Sydney 

^ These two quotations are taken from the New York Herald, Decem- 
ber 5, 1859. 



JOHN BROWN 31 

shook tyrants with terror. ... He stands not only as a 
brave man in a community of cowards, but a moral hero and 
prophet." ^ The New York Times said : "At the same time 
it cannot be doubted that Brown's personal bearing through- 
out the trial, his courage, his courtesy, his perfect self-pos- 
session, and his evident conviction of the rightfulness of his 
acts have awakened a personal sympathy for him even in the 
hearts of those who most detest his principles and his con- 
duct ; ... it can hardly be possible that any man should 
read the words of the brave fanatic without a glow of half 
compassionate admiration." ^ The day following the execu- 
tion this paper declared that thousands had sympathy for 
Brown who were convinced that he should die. 

That the same sentiments characterized the lesser Repub- 
Hcan papers was manifested in every part of the country. 
The Winsted (Connecticut) Herald said, 'Tor one we con- 
fess that we love him, we honor him, we applaud him." The 
New Haven Journal and Courier declared that John Brown 
was hung ''because he acted on the behef that the Declara- 
tion of Independence was more than a generality." The 
New Haven Palladium wrote : "John Brown had no murder, 
no treason, in his heart. His mission was one of freedom. 
... He was a good man and a true friend of his race, and 
he died a Christian death. " The Norwich Bulletin: "John 
Brown died a martyr to the cause ; we have said so once, 
we say so again." The Hartford Press: "Slavery must 
come down peacefully, or scenes of horror shall mark its 
overthrow in blood." ^ 

The Republicans, therefore, as well as their radical and 
conservative brethren in the North and the radicals of the 
South were strongly influenced by the John Brown affair. 

1 The New York Independent, November 10, 1859. 

2 The New York Times, November 2 and 3, 1859. 

' The New York Journal of Cominerce, March 3, 1860, ooutains these 
quotations from the Connecticut papers. 



32 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

The country was slowly recovering from the business de- 
pression of 1857, and the Kansas question and the Lecomp- 
ton constitution were rapidly becoming matters of the past ; 
the nation was enjoying more peace than for many months 
and seemed destined to go into the presidential campaign 
without any urgent and immediate question of dispute, when 
suddenly the firebrand of Harper's Ferry flared, forth and 
kindled public sentiment into new life. This was the in- 
fluence of John Brown on the poUtics of the country. By| 
the creation of sudden and intense excitement, which ren- 
dered deliberation and moderation well-nigh impossible, he 
forced the political parties of the country to assume extreme 
positions and declare extreme principles before they were 
prepared to do so ; and from these positions and principles, 
once assumed and declared, there could be no receding. The 
only change possible was progress into more advanced 
radicalism. John Brown must, therefore, bear the immediate 
responsibility for the extremes of the presidential campaign 
of 1860. 



CHAPTER II 

helper's impending crisis and the speakership 

CONTEST 

f\^ December 5, three days after the execution of Brown, 
^-^ while the country was still under the spell of the unusual 
passions and excitement aroused by that dramatic event, 
the Thirty-sixth Congress of the United States met in its 
first regular session. In the House of Representatives, where 
the first duty was to effect organization, balloting for speaker 
began almost at once, one hundred and seventeen votes 
being necessary to a choice. In the first ballot Bocock 
of Virginia, the leading Democratic candidate, received 
eighty-six votes, Sherman of Ohio and Grow of Pennsylvania, 
the Republican candidates, sixty-six and forty-three votes 
respectively. When the result of this ballot was announced, 
Clark of Missouri arose for remarks, and after some confusion, 
incident to the fact that in the absence of a regular speaker 
the temporary presiding oflScer, the clerk, refused to decide 
points of order but insisted that the House should decide 
for itself, he introduced the following resolution : ^'Whereas, 
certain members of this House, now in nomination for 
speaker, did indorse the book hereinafter mentioned, Resolved, 
That the doctrines and sentiments of a certain book, called 
The Impending Crisis in the South, How to meet It, are 
insurrectionary and hostile to the peace and tranquillity 
of the country, and that no member of this House, who has 
indorsed and recommended it, is fit to be speaker of the 
House." 
In this way an antislavery book, written by a poor white 
D 33 



34 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

of North Carolina, was suddenly raised into national promi- 
nence ; it had first appeared in 1857 without attracting atten- 
tion, had later been severely castigated in the Senate of the 
United States without widespread comment, and with the 
indorsement of sixty-eight Republican Congressmen, in- 
cluding both Sherman and Grow, and leading Republican 
editors, had been used as a campaign document in the fall 
campaign of 1859. The prevailing excitement now lent it 
new significance. In the week of the death of Brown the 
book had been resurrected and laid before the country in 
large extracts in the columns of the New York Herald. Hope 
was kindled again in the hearts of the Democrats, who had 
been badly beaten in the previous fall elections, losing even 
Pennsylvania, their old stronghold; combined with the 
Virginia raid, the new book might arouse such a conservative 
reaction as to completely rejuvenate the party. Thus 
buoyed anew, the administration party girded itself for one 
of the most bitter parhamentary struggles in the history of the 
national House. 

The book itself, whose author, Hinton Rowan Helper, was 
but twenty-seven years of age, indeed proved ^'insurrection- 
ary and hostile to the domestic peace and tranquillity of the 
country." Its outline was simple. It opened with a compar- 
ison of the free and slave states, altogether to the advantage 
Oi the former. When the first census was taken in 1790, 
New York had a population of 340,120, Virginia twice that 
number or 748,308 ; sixty years later New York had 3,097,- 
394, Virginia 1,421,661. In 1791 the exports of New York 
equaled $2,505,465 and those of Virginia $3,130,865, but 
in 1852 those of New York amounted to $87,484,450 and 
those of Virginia to $2,724,657 ; although in 1790 the im- 
ports of the two states were about equal, in 1853 those of the 
Northern state were $178,270,999 and of the Southern state 
only $399,000. The products of mining, manufacturing, 
and the mechanic arts in the one case were valued in 1850 at 



THE SPEAKERSHIP CONTEST 35 

$237,597,249, in the other at $29,705,387 ; in the same year 
the real and personal property in Virginia, excluding slaves, 
exceeded $390,000,000 ; in New York, where there were no 
slaves, $1,080,000,000. New York City was worth more 
than the whole state of Virginia. In 1790 North Carolina 
had 393,000 people, 15,000 more than Massachusetts ; in 1850 
Massachusetts, with 994,000, was 125,000 ahead. The 
exports and imports of the New England state in 1853 
were valued at $58,000,000, while those of North Carohna 
were so small as to be unworthy of record ; products of min- 
ing, manufacturing, and the mechanic arts in the one instance 
reached $150,000,000, in the other $9,000,000. Boston alone 
could almost buy North Carohna, while in the whole state of 
Massachusetts, with no slaves, real and personal property 
was valued at $570,000,000, and in North Carolina, with 
slaves, at only $266,000,000. In 1760 the one city of Charles- 
ton, South Carohna, imported $2,600,000 worth of articles, 
and in 1855 only $1,750,000 worth ; Philadelphia, in 1854, 
$21,000,000 worth. The products of mining, manufacturing, 
and the mechanic arts in Pennsylvania in 1850 totalled 
$155,000,000, in South Carolina $7,000,000 ; the cash value 
of Pennsylvania's farms was $422,000,000, of those in South 
Carolina $86,000,000 ; and the real and personal property in 
Pennsylvania, with no slaves, was put at $729,000,000 ; in 
South Carohna, with 384,000 slaves, at $288,000,000. Pemi- 
sylvania spent $1,348,000 on her schools, possessed 393 li- 
braries other than private, and 310 newspapers and periodi- 
cals, of which 84,898,672 copies circulated ; whereas South 
Carolina expended on her schools $200,000, had 26 libraries, 
and 46 newspapers and periodicals with 7,145,930 copies in 
circulation. Many other details were given. Incontro- 
vertible facts afforded ample evidence that something 
was wrong with the South, racially, politically, and morally ; 
else how had the North so far outstripped her ? 
It was well known to Southerners that they were compelled 



36 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

to go North for almost everything of utihty and adornment, 
from watches, shoe pegs, and paintings to cotton mills, steam- 
ships, and statuary ; there was no foreign trade in the South, 
no princely Southern merchants. ''And now to the point. 
In our opinion — an opinion which has been formed from 
data obtained by assiduous researches and comparisons, from 
laborious investigation, logical reasoning, and earnest reflec- 
tion — the causes which have impeded the progress and pros- 
perity of the South, which have dwindled our commerce and 
other similar pursuits into the most contemptible insignifi- 
cance ; sunk a large majority of our people into galling pov- 
erty and ignorance, rendered a small minority conceited and 
tyrannical, and driven the rest away from their homes ; en- 
tailed upon us a humiliating dependence on the free states ; 
disgraced us in the recesses of our own souls, and brought us 
under reproach in the eyes of all enlightened and civilized 
nations, may be traced to one common source, and there 
find solution in the most hateful and horrible word that was 
ever incorporated into the vocabulary of human economy — 
slavery." It was the first and most sacred duty of every 
Southerner, without evasion or compromise, to declare him- 
self an unqualified abolitionist; the only thing to save the 
South from the vortex of utter ruin was complete abolition. 
There must be no more yielding to the domination of the in- 
flated oligarchy. 

Away with the agricultural boasts of the South. Com- 
paring agricultural records the author found that there was a 
balance of $44,000,000 in favor of the North ; the one North- 
ern crop of hay was worth more than the cotton, tobacco, rice, 
hay, and hemp of all the Southern states. Moreover, the 
North secured more profit even from Southern agriculture 
than did the South herself, for the cotton was carried to its- 
destination in the ships of the Northerners, spun in their fac- 
tories, woven in their looms, insured in their offices, and re- 
turned again South in their ships. 



THE SPEAKERSHIP CONTEST 37 

The soil under slave culture sickened and died. Said C. C. 
Clay of Alabama : ''I can show you with sorrow in the older 
portions of Alabama the sad memorials of the artless and ex- 
hausting culture of cotton. Our small planters, after taking 
the cream off their lands, unable to restore them by rest, 
manures, and otherwise, are going West and South, in search 
of other virgin lands, which they may and will despoil in like 
manner. Our wealthier planters with greater means, and no 
more skill, are buying out their poorer neighbors, extending 
their plantations, and adding to their slave force. The 
wealthy few, who are able to live on smaller profits, and to 
give their blasted fields some rest, are thus pushing off the 
many." The author then quoted from an address by Henry 
A. Wise to Virginians : ^'Commerce has long ago spread her 
sails and sailed away from you. You have not as yet dug 
more than coal enough to warm yourselves at your own 
hearths ; you have set no tilt hammers to strike blows worthy 
of Gods in your iron foundries ; you have not yet spun more 
than coarse cotton enough in the way of manufactures, to 
clothe your own slaves. You have no commerce, no mining, 
no manufactures. You have relied alone on the single power 
of agriculture, and such agriculture! Your sedge patches out- 
shine the sun. Your inattention to your only source of 
wealth has seared the very bosom of Mother Earth. Instead 
of having to feed cattle on a thousand hills, you have had to 
chase the stumped-tailed steer through the sedge patches 
to procure a tough beefsteak." 

Definite recommendations followed as to how to get rid 
of slavery. First, thorough political organization and inde- 
pendent political action on the part of the nonslaveholding 
whites of the South; second, inehgibility of slaveholders 
to membership in the organization — never another vote 
to any one who advocated the retention and perpetuation 
of human slavery ; third, no cooperation with proslavery 
politicians, no fellowship with them in religion, no affiUa- 



38 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

tion with them in society; fourth, no patronage to pro- 
slavery merchants, no guestship in slave-waiting hotels, 
no fees to proslavery lawyers, no employment of proslavery 
physicians, no audience to proslavery parsons; fifth, no 
more hiring of slaves by nonslaveholders ; sixth, abrupt dis- 
continuance of subscription to proslavery newspapers ; 
seventh, the greatest possible encouragement to free white 
labor ; eighth, immediate death to slavery, or if no im- 
mediate, then unqualified proscription of its advocates dur- 
ing the period of its existence ; ninth, a tax of sixty dollars 
on every slaveholder for each and every negro in his posses- 
sion at the present time or at any time between now and 
July 4, 1863 ; tenth, an additional tax of forty dollars per 
annum to be levied annually on every slaveholder for each 
and every negro found in his possession after July 4, 18G3. 

''This, then, is the outline of our scheme for the abolition 
of slavery in the Southern states. Let it be acted upon with 
due promptitude and as certain as truth is mightier than 
error, fifteen years will not elapse before every foot of terri- 
tory, from the mouth of the Delaware to the emboguing of 
the Rio Grande, will glitter with jewels of freedom. . . . 
But, sirs, slaveholders, chevaUers, and lords of the lash, we 
are unwilling to allow you to cheat the negroes out of all the 
rights and claims to which, as human beings, they are most 
sacredly entitled. Not alone for ourselves as individuals, 
but for others also, particularly for five or six million of non- 
slaveholding whites, whom your iniquitous statism has de- 
barred from almost all the mental and material comforts 
of life, do we speak, when we say, you must sooner or later 
emancipate your slaves, and pay each and every one of them 
at least sixty dollars cash in hand. By doing this you will 
be restoring to them their natural rights and remunerating 
them at the rate of less than twenty-six cents per annum 
for the long and cheerless period of their servitude, from the 
20th of August, 1620, when on the James River in Vir- 



THE SPEAKERSHIP CONTEST 39 

ginia, they became the unhappy slaves of unhappy tyrants. 
Moreover, by doing this you will be performing but a 
simple act of justice to the nonslaveholding whites, upon 
whom the system of slavery has weighed scarcely less heavily 
than upon the negroes themselves. You will also be apply- 
ing a saving balm to your own outraged hearts and con- 
sciences, and your children, yourself in fact, freed from the 
accursed stain of slavery, will become respectable, useful, 
and honorable members of society." Finally the author 
taunted and defied the slaveholders as follows: ''And now, 
sirs, we have thus laid down our ultimatum. What are you 
going to do about it ? Something dreadful, of course ! 
Perhaps you will dissolve the Union again. Do it, if you 
dare ! Our motto, and we would have you to understand it, 
is 'the abolition of slavery and the perpetuation of the Amer- 
ican Union.' If by any means you do succeed in your trea- 
sonable attempts to take the South out of the Union to-day, 
we will bring her back to-morrow; if she goes away with 
you, she will return without you. Do not mistake the 
meaning of the last clause of the last sentence. We could 
elucidate it so thoroughly that no intelligent person could 
fail to comprehend it ; but for reasons, which may hereafter 
appear, we forego the task. Henceforth there are other 
interests to be consulted in the South, aside from the interests 
of negroes and slaveholders. A profound sense of duty in- 
cites us to make the greatest possible efforts for the abolition 
of slavery ; an equally profound sense of duty calls for a 
continuation of those efforts until the very last foe to free- 
dom shall have been utterly vanquished. . . . Thus, 
terror engenderers of the South, have we fully and frankly 
defined our position ; we have no modifications to propose, 
no compromises to offer, nothing to retract. Frown, sirs, 
fret, foam, prepare your weapons, threat, strike, shoot, stab, 
bring on civil war, dissolve the Union, nay, annihilate the 
solar system if you will, do all this, more, less, better less, 



40 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

anything — do what you will, sirs, you can neither foil or 
intimidate us ; our purpose is as firmly fixed as the eternal 
pillars of heaven; we have determined to abolish slavery, 
and so help us God, abolish it we will !" 

The author then gave an elaborate set of quotations to 
prove that the Southern statesmen quite generally in the 
early days of the republic, Northern statesmen of all times, 
and leaders of all civilized nations from antiquity to modern 
times, were arrayed against slavery; the testimony of the 
churches and of the Bible was likewise against it. Washing- 
ton wrote, ''I never mean, unless some particular set of 
circumstances should compel me to it, to possess another 
slave by purchase, it being among my first wishes to see some 
plan adopted by which slavery in this country may be abol- 
ished by law." Jefferson proposed a plan of emancipation, 
and added: ^^ Indeed, I tremble for my country when I 
reflect that God is just ; that his justice cannot sleep forever ; 
that considering numbers, nature, and natural means only, 
a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, 
is among possible events ; that it may become probable by 
supernatural influence ! The Almighty has no attributes 
that can take sides with us in such a contest." Madison and 
Monroe were opposed to slavery. Patrick Henry wrote, 
''It would rejoice my very soul that every one of my fellow- 
beings were emancipated." Henry Clay said, *'So long 
as God allows the vital current to flow through my veins, I 
will never, never, never, by word or thought, by mind or will, 
aid in admitting one rod of free territory to the everlasting 
curse of human bondage." ^ 

1 The book closes with further facts and figures in comparison of the 
two sections. The North, with 780,576 hands, turned out $842,586,058 
worth of manufactured product; the South, with 161,733 hands, 
$165,413,027 worth. The one group of states had 3682 miles of canals, 
17,855 miles of railroads, a bank capital of $230,100,340, and a militia 
force of 1,381,843, while the other had 1116 miles of canals, 6859 miles of 
railroads, $102,078,940 bank capital, and a militia force of 792,876. The 



THE SPEAKERSHIP CONTEST 41 

In the eyes of slaveholders such a book, containing such 
advice, was rebellion, and the men who gave it their indorse- 
ment, understanding the scope and purpose of their act, 
deserved a nameless fate. Republicans in the House, 
forced by Clark's motion to take the defensive, although 
they mildly admitted their circulation of the despised book 
as party literature, indulged but little in direct attacks on 
the South, whereas, on the other hand, the Southerners were 
aggressive in the extreme. A part of almost every day the 
House devoted to a fruitless ballot or two for speaker, the 
remainder of the time to the speeches of the mob. For it 
was a great unruly mob over which by circumstances the 
clerk was forced to preside. Members were seated on wooden 
benches, arranged in a semicircle around the speaker's 
desk ; a wide central aisle, with the Republican benches on 
the one side and the Democratic on the other, like an arena, 
seemed to invite the hostile camps to combat. Despite num- 
berless challenges to come forth and state and defend his 
opinion of Helperism, Sherman, who was the leading Repub- 
lican candidate after the first ballot, as often refused so long 
as the Democrats refused to withdraw the offensive resolution. 
Points of order were discussed, questions of procedure pro- 
pounded; the whole range of Republican and Democratic 
policy was now run over, now the possibilities of the coming 
presidential campaign weighed in the balance. The facts 
and figures of the Crisis the Southerners could not dis- 
pute, and they wisely never attempted to do so, but they 
raged and threatened. Said Pryor of Virginia, ''We have 

one section had 62,433 public schools, 72,621 teachers, and 2,169,901 
school children, the other 18,507 schools, 19,307 teachers, and 581,861 
school children; there were in the one section 14,911 libraries other than 
private, with 3,888,234 volumes, in the other 695 libraries with 649,577 
volumes ; in the North 1790 newspapers and periodicals with 334,146,281 
copies circulated, and in the South 704 newspapers and periodicals with 
81,038,693 copies circulated; Northerners in the one year took out 1929 
patents, Southerners 268. 



42 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

threatened and resolved, and resolved and threatened, and 
backed out from our threats, until, so help me God ! I will 
never utter another threat or another resolution; but as 
the stroke follows the Hghtning's flash, so, with me, acts 
shall be coincident and commensurate with words." Curry 
of Alabama, ''I am not ashamed or afraid publicly to avow 
that the election of William H. Seward or Salmon P. Chase, 
or any other representative of the Republican party, upon 
a sectional platform, ought to be resisted to the disruption of 
every tie that binds this confederation together." Crawford 
of Georgia : ''Now, in regard to the election of a Black Re- 
publican President, I have this to say, and I speak the senti- 
ment of every Democrat on this floor from the state of 
Georgia, we will never submit to the inauguration of a 
Black Republican President. (Applause from the Democratic 
benches and hisses from the Republicans.) I repeat it, sir ; and 
I have authority to say so ; no Democratic representative from 
Georgia on this floor will ever submit to the inauguration 
of a Black Republican President. (Renewed hisses and 
applause.) " Singleton of Mississippi, ''If you desire to know 
my counsel to the people of Mississippi, it is, that they take 
measures immediately in conjunction with the other Southern 
states, to separate from you." Gartrell of Georgia, "I 
shall announce the solemn fact, disagreeable though it may 
be to you as well as to me, to my people as well as to yours, 
that if this course of aggression shall be continued, the people 
of the South, of the slaveholding states, will be compelled 
by every principle of justice, honor, and self-preservation, 
to disrupt every tie that binds them to the Union, peace- 
fully if they can, forcibly if they must." ^ 

On some occasions passion went beyond the bounds of 
parliamentary order. In a rough-and-tumble fight one day, 

» The Congressional Globe, 36 Cong., 1 Sess., Vol. I, pp. 840-841, gives 
these and other threats. See the same. Vol. IV, App., p. 53, for an angry 
encounter between Kilgore of the North and Singleton of the South. 



THE SPEAKERSHIP CONTEST 43 

amid intense excitement, a pistol fell from the pocket of a 
member from New York. Early in the session Branch of 
North Carolina challenged Grow of Pennsylvania to a duel, 
which the latter promptly refused. At another time Logan 
of Illinois drew a pistol on a colleague. ''By God, if I can't 
talk, I can do something else," he exclaimed. Yet mutual 
good will was not lacking ; inflammatory speeches and angry 
encounters on the floor were usually over in a few minutes, 
and gave place to good feeling, to chatting, smoking, and 
drinking in mutual good-fellowship. Even Sherman, arch- 
traitor, denounced as unfit to Hve and as unfit to die, after 
all was over might be seen walking off, arm in arm, with 
his castigators. 

The responsibility for the failure to elect the speaker was 
justly laid to the door of the two small parties or factions, 
the Anti-Lecompton Democrats and the Americans, who 
steadfastly refused to vote for Sherman or to allow the 
adoption of the pluraHty rule for the election. The substitu- 
tion of a rule of this kind in place of a majority vote had been 
the only means of ending the struggle of 1849 in the House 
with the election of Howell Cobb of Georgia on the sixty- 
second ballot, and that of 1856 with the election of Banks of 
Massachusetts on the one hundred and thirtj^-third ballot ; 
and in the minds of the Republicans, who easily commanded 
the highest vote, such a rule was now desirable. 

Finally patronage, ''the cohesive power of pubhc plunder," 
accomplished the work. After the contest had dragged itself 
out for two months, continuing uninterruptedly through 
the Christmas holidays,^ the Repubhcans gave up the radi- 
cal Sherman and threw their votes to Pennington, a member 
of the People's Party of New Jersey, who had uniformly 
voted for Sherman, but had not signed the offensive indorse- 
ment of the Helper book because he was not a member of 
the House when that indorsement had appeared ; the Anti- 
^ Christmas and New Year's came on Sunday this year. 



44 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

Lecompton Democrats and the Americans gave the new 
candidate the three or four votes that Sherman had always 
lacked and thus an election was accomplished. An Anti- 
Lecomptonite was made clerk, an American sergeant at arms, 
and together the two small parties divided several important 
committee assignments.^ 

The new speaker, sixty-three years of age and of a dis- 
tinguished New Jersey family, was a graduate of Princeton 
College and by profession a lawyer ; for seven years he had 
served his state with distinction as governor, in which 
position he had achieved a national reputation as an anti- 
slavery man. He had refused the governorship of the terri- 
tory of Minnesota proffered him by President Taylor, and 
later an appointment as judge to settle claims with Mexico. 
Elected to Congress by the People's Party, or as it was 
sometimes called, the Opposition, his new honor, conferred 
by Republican votes, was calculated to facilitate the merging 
of his party into the larger opposition or Republican party 
both in New Jersey and in the neighboring state of Penn- 
sylvania. Along with Muhlenburg, the first speaker, and 
Henry Clay, Pennington enjoyed the distinction of elevation 
to the speakership at the beginning of his first term as mem- 

1 In the long interval covering December and January the members of 
the House could receive no salary from the government as they had not 
been sworn in and there was also no speaker to sign the salary warrants. 
In the contingency the former sergeant at arms, active candidate for re- 
election, privately borrowed money and advanced it regularly to the 
members in easy loans, in the hope that thus he could win the post again ; 
but he had his pains for nothing, as the office went to another. It was 
suggested at the time, that inasmuch as there was no speaker to swear the 
members in, an ordinary justice be secured to perform the task; the 
speaker was not necessary to this function. Pennington announced his 
committees almost at once ; Sherman had had these made up for a long 
time, and the successful candidate adopted these assignments as his own. 
Probably he had to promise to do this in order to secure the Republican 
vote. Here, then, was an instance in which the speaker practically did 
not select his own committees but allowed a party to dictate the choices 
to him. 



THE SPEAKERSHIP CONTEST 45 

ber of the House ; as a new man he had no record and was 
not yet definitely a member of any faction, and thus his 
name was a good one to win support from various groups.^ 
Tall and stately, courteous and affable, he was yet without 
practical legislative experience, and proved a poor speaker, 
entirely dependent upon accommodating members and 
intelligent pages.^ 

The effect on the country of this long contest was intense. 
Every phase of the two months' battle, every excoriation of 
Helperism, every bit of Southern bluster, every Northern 
argument and expostulation, every physical clash, was 
eagerly read about the next morning by hundreds of thou- 
sands. Numerous Northern cities greeted the election 
of Pennington with the firing of one hundred guns, while the 
Richmond papers draped themselves in mourning. North- 
ern bookstores and news stands sold one hundred and fifty 
thousand copies of the incendiary Crisis, the popularity 
of which recalled Uncle Tom's Cabin. In the South the 
dreaded book was suppressed and supporters of it persecuted 
after the fashion of John Brown's sympathizers. So intent 
were Southerners on keeping the incendiary sentiments from 
the common people and from the negroes that they made 
practically no mention of Helper and his book in their local 
press. An exclusive boat club in Washington, D.C., re- 
quested the withdrawal of a member who indorsed Helper. 

1 This principle was to receive application later in the selection of 
Lincoln as the party's candidate for the presidency. See p. 127, 

2 He was defeated for reelection to the House, November, 1860. In 
a campaign speech in the fall, Pennington declared that he knew several 
weeks before his election to the speakership that sufficient votes to elect 
him could be obtained at any time ; the Republicans, however, coveted 
the moral influence of the victory and clung to Sherman as long as possible. 
The New York Tribune, February 18, 1860, gives an account of the 
courteous reception by Pennington, while he was governor of New Jersey, 
of a communication from a world antislavery convention in London, 
praying for the abolition of slavery in America. The Southern governors 
spurned the circular. 



46 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

In a bill regulating the Police Commissioners of Baltimore; 
Maryland, the state legislature inserted the following clause, 
"Provided that no Black Republican or indorser or supporter 
of the Helper book shall be appointed to office under the said 
Board"; that is, no Helperite could be a policeman. In 
the charter of a street railway for the same city there was 
this clause, '' That no Black Republican or indorser or sup- 
porter of the Helper book shall receive any of the benefits 
or privileges of this act or be employed in any capacity by 
the said railroad company"; that is, no Helperite could 
ride in the street cars. This was the same legislature that 
censured the American, Henry Winter Davis, member of 
Congress from Baltimore, for throwing his vote to Penning- 
ton. In the town square at High Point, North Carolina, 
ten copies of the Crisis were publicly burned. A farmer 
of Alexandria County, Virginia, was arrested for buying 
four copies of the book, and thrust into jail under bonds of 
$2000. Rev. Daniel Worth, a missionary of the American 
Missionary Association, was arrested at Greensboro, North 
Carolina, for selling the hated book and in default of $15,000 
bail was allowed to languish some three months in jail. 
At the trial four copies of Helper were produced, which it 
was proved that Worth had sold. One buyer, learning of 
Worth's arrest, buried his copy ; another hid his in a hollow 
log ; another testified that Worth on selling a copy to him, 
told him to be careful whom he allowed to see it. A sen- 
tence of one year in prison followed. Tried again on the 
same charge. Worth was convicted but immediately released 
on bail, and finally escaped to New York, where both he and 
Helper addressed large popular audiences in the interests of 
their cause. The story of Worth's persecution was a favor- 
ite one in the Northern papers. 



CHAPTER III 

ANTISLAVERY IN THE HOUSE AND SENATE 

AFTER the final organization of the House the record 
of Congress was much less that of a legislative body 
than of a great factory for the manufacture of public opinion ; 
speeches were made and things were done for home consump- 
tion, to influence voters. Probably more than at present 
the people were influenced by Congress, just as the frequent 
congressional clashes were themselves in turn but a reflec- 
tion of the known attitude of the home communities. There 
was formal discussion of the tariff, polygamy, the Pacific 
Railroad, the Homestead Act, and a few other acts of general 
public policy, but the one unfailing topic, to which all others 
inevitably led, was the sectional question of slavery. 

In the House perhaps the most famous speech on either 
side of this question, and certainly the most famous Repub- 
lican utterance there on the subject, was that of Owen Love- 
joy of Illinois. The speech should be read in its entirety, for 
no adequate idea of it can be gained from mere description 
or quotation. The subject was the extermination, so far 
as the federal government had power, of the ''twin rehcs of 
barbarism," polygamy and slavery, to which pohcy the Re- 
publican party pledged itself in its platform of 1856. The 
deathblow had already been dealt the former, so that the 
speaker would consider slavery alone. After some technical 
objections to his speaking, he proceeded as follows: ''We 
are told that where slavery will pay, slaveholders will go. 
Precisely upon the same principle we might say that where 

47 



48 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

robbery will pay, robbery will go; where piracy will pay, 
piracy will go; and where adipose human flesh is cheaper 
than that of beeves, cannibalism will go, because it will pay. 
Sir, than robbery, than piracy, than polygamy, slaveholding 
is worse, more criminal, more injurious to man, and con- 
sequently more offensive to God. Slaveholding has been 
justly designated as the sum of all villainy. Put every crime 
perpetrated among men into a moral crucible, and dissolve 
and combine them all, and the resultant amalgam is slave- 
holding. It has the violence of robbery. A Member. 
You are joking. Mr Love joy. No, sir, I am speaking in 
dead earnest. It has the violence of robbery, the blood and 
cruelty of piracy; it has the offensive and brutal lusts of 
polygamy, all combined and concentrated in itself, with 
aggravations that neither one of these crimes ever knew or 
dreamed of." 

The justification of slavery, so far as he knew, rested on 
three grounds, the infirmity of the enslaved race, the civiliz- 
ing and christianizing influences of slavery, and the guaran- 
tees of the federal constitution. As to the first point : 
''We may concede it as a matter of fact that it (the negro 
race) is infirm ; but does it follow, therefore, that it is right 
to enslave a man because he is infirm? This, to me, is a 
most abhorrent doctrine. It would place the weak every- 
where at the mercy of the strong ; it would place the poor 
at the mercy of the rich ; it would place those that are de- 
ficient in intellect at the mercy of those who are gifted in 
mental endowment. The principle of enslaving human 
beings because they are inferior is this : if a man is a cripple, 
trip him ; if he is old and weak and bowed with the weight 
of years, strike him, for he cannot strike back; if idotic, 
take advantage of him ; and if a child, deceive him. This, 
sir, this is the doctrine of Democrats, and the doctrine of 
devils as well, and there is no place in the universe outside 
the five points of hell and the Democratic party where the 



ANTISLAVERY IN THE HOUSE AND SENATE 49 

practice and the prevalence of such doctrines would not be 
a disgrace. {Laughter) If the strong of the earth are to 
enslave the weak here, it would justify angels in enslaving 
men, because they are superior; and archangels in turn 
would be justified in subjugating those who are inferior in 
intellect and position, and ultimatelj^ it would transform 
Jehovah into an infinite Juggernaut roUing the huge wheels 
of His omnipotence (here Mr. Lovejoy advanced from his seat 
on the Republican benches out into the long aisle in front 
of the Democratic benches). Mr. Pry or (advancing from 
the Democratic side to meet him) : The gentleman from 
Illinois shall not approach this side of the House, shaking 
his fists and talking in the way he has talked. It is bad 
enough to be compelled to sit here and hear him utter his 
treasonable and insulting language, but he shall not, sir, 
come upon this side of the House, shaking his fists in our 
faces." Great confusion followed, and Mr. Pryor spoke up : 
''Let the gentleman speak from his seat, and say all under 
the rules he is entitled to say. . . . He shall not come here 
gesticulating in a menacing and ruffianly manner." Here 
some one tried to pour oil on the waters by sajdng that Love- 
joy should speak from his seat ; all knew him to be a man 
of courage and that he could not be intimidated. " Mr. 
Pryor. No one wants to intimidate him. Mr. Lovejoy. No- 
body can intimidate him." Thirty or forty members were 
now gathered about the two principals in the long aisle; 
finally it was moved that the committee rise, whereupon 
the speaker took the chair and asked for order. ^' Mr. Barks- 
dale. Order that black-hearted scoundrel and nigger- 
stealing thief to take his seat and this side of the House will 
do it. Mr. McQueen. We will allow nobody to come over 
from that side of the House and bully us on this side." 
Finally order was restored, and Mr. Lovejoy went on to 
finish his sentence: ''axle-deep, amid the enslaved and 
mangled and bleeding bodies of human beings {laughter on 



50 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

the Democratic side) on the grouDd that he was infinitely 
superior, and that they were an inferior race. Mr. Gartrell. 
The man is crazy." 

As to the civiUzing of the negroes : "It is a strange mode 
of Christianizing a race to turn them over into brutism with- 
out legal marriage. Among the four millions of slaves in 
this country there is not a single husband or wdfe. There is 
not legally a single father or mother. There is not a single 
home or hearthstone among these four milUons. . . . Chris- 
tianizing them, sir. Christianizing them by a new process. 
The slave states have a right to an exclusive patent on it. 
Taking them out in sight of the church, as one was taken out 
not long ago in the state of Tennessee by a Presbyterian 
elder, and laid down on his face on the ground, his hands and 
his feet extended to their utmost tension and tied to pickets, 
and the Gospel whipped into him with the broadside of a 
handsaw, discolored whelks of sanctification being raised 
between the teeth every time this Gospel agency fell upon 
the naked and quivering flesh of the tortured convert. 
{Laughter) Christianized as a young girl was Christianized 
in this city since this session of Congress, by being whipped 
and sent to the garret and found dead in the morning, with 
the blood oozing from nose and ears." The orator pictured 
the funeral, the fine black coffin and the decorating ribbons, 
and ridiculed the Southern boast of Christian funerals for 
slaves. "See, Mr. Lovejoy, there is a slave funeral. Is 
that treating them like brutes ? Look into the coffin ! Look 
into the carriage !" 

On the third point the speaker denied the constitutionaUty 
of slavery; slavery was not in the constitution, and when 
he took the oath of office as Congressman he did not swear 
to uphold slavery. He knew that Congress could not touch 
slavery in the states, and yet he justified himself in discuss- 
ing it because he hoped to hold it up to the scorn of all the 
world and ultimately to secure its removal. 



ANTISLAVERY IN THE HOUSE AND SENATE 51 

He approved of Helper's book and of John Brown. "I 
tell you, Mr. Chairman, and I tell you all, that if I were a 
slave and I had the power, and were it necessary to achieve 
my freedom, I would not hesitate to fill up and bridge the 
chasm that yawns between the hell of slavery and the 
heaven of freedom with the carcasses of the slain." ^ 

As a result of this ferocious speech and the violence attend- 
ing it, Pryor of Virginia, Lovejoy's leading antagonist, 
though a very young man, challenged Potter of Wisconsin to 
a duel, undoubtedly counting on the latter's refusal and the 
discomfiture thereby of the North. The doughty West- 
erner, however, turned the tables by accepting the chal- 
lenge and naming bowie knives as the weapons. This the 
Southerner felt called upon to refuse, and the proud F.F.V. 
name of Pryor temporarily became a byword and a joke in 
the Northern papers. During the Repubhcan national 
convention a month later in Chicago Potter was presented 
with a bowie knife seven feet long, appropriately inscribed. 

Not once but a number of times the lie was passed in the 
House, and on one occasion the Vice President of the United 
States was called upon to intervene in a fist fight between 
two members of the House on the steps of the Capitol. In 
these various ways the violence that attended the speaker- 
ship contest was prolonged to the very end of the session. 

The other House of Congress, the Senate of the United 
States, immediately upon assembling in December, was 
plunged into a discussion of the slavery question just as 
was the House of Representatives, but while the one body 
considered Helper's book, the other debated John Brown. 
As promptly as the celebrated Clark motion in the House 
came the motion of Senator Mason of Virginia in the Senate 
for a special committee to inquire into the facts of the Har- 
per's Ferry raid, to determine whether there was any oppo- 
sition to the troops of the United States, whether any Vir- 

1 The Congressional Globe, 36 Cong., 1 Sess., Vol. IV, App., p. 202. 



X 



52 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

ginia citizens or troops were murdered, whether there was 
"any organization intended to subvert the government of any 
of the states of the Union," "what was the character of such 
organization," "whether any citizens of the United States, 
not present, were imphcated therein, or accessory thereto, 
by contributions of money, ammunitions, or otherwise," 
"whether any and what legislation may, in their opinion, be 
necessary on the part of the United States for the future 
preservation of the peace of the country"; said committee 
also should "have power to send for persons and papers." 

Fortunately this motion to a large extent served to throw 
the consideration of the matter into the committee away 
from the open Senate, so that the latter body, debating John 
Brown, was saved a repetition of the excitement of the pitched 
battle in the House over Helper ; but few Senators in open 
session made provoking speeches on Brown. Though the 
sittings of the committee were open to the public, the testi- 
mony there was but meagerly reported in the newspapers 
and general interest in the hearings was small. Indeed, as 
Brown's race was run, and his principles amply vindicated, 
the inquiry was almost academic, nay, political, as some 
believed, designed, in general, to throw discredit upon the 
Republican party and in particular to make Senator Mason 
President. 

Strangely enough, a fine point of constitutional law, not 
directly connected with Brown himself, but arising out of 
the proceedings of the committee, was followed by the public 
with more eagerness than was any of the testimony ; this 
was the right of a legislative body to imprison a contumacious 
witness for contempt to one of its committees. A popular 
liberty right was at stake. 

Four witnesses, summoned before the committee, failed 
to come and were ordered to be arrested by the sergeant at 
arms, John Brown, Jr., of Ohio, James Redpath of Massa- 
chusetts, Frank B. Sanborn of Massachusetts, and Thaddeus 



ANTISLAVERY IN THE HOUSE AND SENATE 53 

Hyatt of New York. Brown evaded arrest and Redpath 
could not be found. Sanborn was taken in an outrageous 
manner at Concord, Massachusetts, by the sergeant at arms, 
who called him out of his home at night and forcibly carried 
him off without showing his warrant or giving any reason 
for the arrest. The next morning the prisoner secured his 
own release by a writ of habeas corpus, issued by a judge of 
the state court, and later on a fictitious charge had him- 
self arrested by state officials, in order that he might remain 
in the jurisdiction of the state of Massachusetts. He was 
then safe, for the Senate did not choose to enter into a con- 
troversy with the state for the possession of the prisoner. 

Hyatt, at first fleeing from arrest, finally gave himself up 
and voluntarily went to Washington with his lawyers to 
argue the case. Standing before the bar of the Senate and 
not before the committee, he gave his answer in the form of 
a long constitutional argument of over two hours' duration, 
read to empty benches by two clerks in succession, who fre- 
quently turned two or three pages at a time. The prisoner 
was willing to appear before the committee and answer all 
questions if he were allowed to do so of his own free will, 
but he said that he would not if constrained by the threat 
of arrest ; the act of 1857 which sought to compel witnesses 
at Congressional investigations to testify to their own dis- 
grace he regarded as contrary to common law and uncon- 
stitutional. By the Constitution of the United States the 
Senate had no power to constitute itself accuser, judge, jury, 
and executive official, without recourse to regular indict- 
ment and without witnesses.^ In favor of the Senate was 

^ Senator Sumner thought that the Senate had the power to compel 
answers from witnesses, in determining elections, returns and qualifica- 
tions of members, in punishing misbehavior of members, in inquiring into 
the conduct of Senate officials, and in cases where a man abused the privi- 
leges of the Senate. But the case in hand constituted a new point, and 
both the Constitution and reason and precedent were against the proposed 
new exercise of the right. See the Congressional Globe, 36 Cong., 1 Sess., 
Vol. II, p. 1100. 



54 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

the contention that a committee hearing without such power 
would be rendered useless; looking in the same direction 
were many English and American colonial cases, and two 
American cases since 1789, the last as late as 1857.^ 

Party lines were broken, prominent Democrats being for 
the accused and prominent Republicans against hun, and 
by a vote of forty-four to ten the self-surrendered prisoner 
was remanded to the Washington jail in care of the sergeant 
at arms, to remain until such time as he should see fit to 
obey the power of the Senate and answer the questions of 
the committee. Proving obdurate, he languished in his 
prison for thirteen and one-half weeks and was only released 
when the conamittee completed its labors and made its 
report. Thus Hyatt suffered, a victim in the opinion of 
many to the galling slavocracy of the United States Senate, 
and a hero in the eyes of the Northern radicals ; the list of the 
antislavery martyrs was growing fast, Brown, Helper, 
Worth, Hyatt, and there were others to be added. That 
some of the opponents of slavery, however, did not admire 
Hyatt's conduct is clearly shown by the curt questions of the 
New York Tribune; was not Hyatt impractical? Why, 
instead of tamely giving up, did he not follow the example 
of Sanborn and release himself by habeas corpus ? Greeley 
did not think that Hyatt's martyrdom had done the cause 
any good. 

When confronted by the business of actual legislation 
during the first two months of its session, the Senate found 
itself balked by the nonorganization of the House of Repre- 
sentatives, and the interesting question arose whether one 
house could perform its part in legislation before the other 

1 Wilekelhausen vs. Willet in New York. The plaintiff sued the 
sheriff for allowing a debtor to escape out of his hands into the control of 
the sergeant at arms of the House of Representatives, at the warrant of 
the speaker of the House. The judge decided that the warrant had the 
force of a habeas corpus and was binding on the sheriff. 



ANTISLAVERY IN THE HOUSE AND SENATE 55 

house was able to proceed. Reason seemed to point to an 
affirmative answer, courtesy, form, and precedent in the 
opposite direction. The decision seemed to depend on 
whether or not there was any Congress, and this latter ques- 
tion further to depend on the solution of the question whether 
or not there was any House of Representatives. There was 
surely a Senate. The constitutional mandate that the 
House of Representatives should choose its speaker and 
other officers seemed clearly to indicate that the House 
existed before the choice of these officers; furthermore, 
failure to take the oath of office did not, as some maintained, 
constitute proof of the nonexistence of the House, as the 
taking of the oath three days after the organization of the 
first House proved. The date of the taking of the oath was 
a mere matter of law and not of the Constitution. All this 
was admitted. But it seemed courteous for the upper 
house, before proceeding to legislate, to wait until officially 
informed of the organization of the lower house ; precedent 
also dictated the same course. In 1839 the Senate waited 
three weeks for the House, in 1849 three weeks and one 
day, and in 1856 two months. This it was finally de- 
termined to do in 1860, and for two months the Senate 
refrained from legislation and gave itself up entirely to ex- 
ecutive business.^ . • 

When legislation became possible the Senate considered 
the same questions as did the House. Politics held sway 
much more than in the popular branch, owing undoubtedly 
to the presence in the Senate's membership of many avowed 
candidates for the presidency, especially of Douglas, the 
popular sovereignty champion. Frequently the Republi- 



^ Credentials were examined, resolutions submitted, memorials pre- 
sented and referred, petitions and papers received, and many speeches 
delivered. See the Congressional Globe, 36 Cong., 1 Sess., Vol. I, pp. 494- 
517. The delay in 1839 was occasioned by a contested election case, in 
1849 and in 1856 by a contest over the speakership. 



56 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

cans poured their wrathful vituperation on the institution of 
slavery, but succeeded in calling forth only a few positive 
statements in its behalf, while at least one great and notable 
attack went entirely unanswered. This was Senator Sum- 
ner's speech on the admission of Kansas into the Union, 
entitled ''The Barbarism of Slavery." After long and 
patient travel in two continents in search of recovery from 
the murderous blows dealt him by Brooks in the Senate 
Chamber four years previously, the Massachusetts states- 
man now returned for his ''revenge," and in June, two 
months after Love joy's effort, he delivered a four hours' 
speech on slavery, which for stubborn logic, bitter invective, 
and stinging, exasperating frankness, has seldom, if ever, been 
equalled. The style had all the speaker's well-known literary 
and oratorical traits. Pedantic references to classical and 
medieval history abounded; vigorous use of language, 
sharp epithets, and grace and charm of style characterized 
the whole, but through it all ran a pervading egotism and 
painful elaboration, with nothing of the abandon, the spon- 
taneity, and utter sinking of self, that characterized the 
great speech in the House. The practical usefulness of the 
attack, too, was seriously questioned; the spirit displayed 
was too vigorous to do good.^ 

"Slavery is the sum of all villainies," said the speaker in 
opening, quoting John Wesley ; it was always the scab, the 
canker, the barebones and the shame of the country. 
"Founded in violence, sustained only by violence, such a 
law must, by a sure law of compensation, blast the master 
as well as the slave ; blast the community of which they are 
a part ; blast the government which does not forbid the out- 
rage; and the longer it exists and the more completely it 
prevails, must its blasting influences penetrate the whole 
social system. Barbarous in origin, barbarous in its law, 

1 It was said at the time that Senator Sumner committed his speeches 
to memory. 



ANTISLAVERY IN THE HOUSE AND SENATE 57 

barbarous in all its pretensions, barbarous in the instruments 
it employs, barbarous in consequences, barbarous in spirit, 
barbarous wherever it shows itself, slavery must breed bar- 
barism, while it develops everywhere, alike in the individual 
and in the society to which he belongs, the essential elements 
of barbarism." In regard to the law of slavery he continued : 
''The slave is held simply for the use of his master, to whose 
behests his life, liberty, and happiness are devoted, and by 
whom he may be bartered, leased, mortgaged, bequeathed, 
invoiced, shipped as cargo, stored as goods, sold on execution, 
knocked off at public auction, and even staked at the gaming 
table on the hazard of a card or a die, — all according to law, 
... He may be marked like a hog, branded like a mule, 
yoked like an ox, hobbled like a horse, driven like an ass, 
sheared like a sheep, maimed like a cur, and constantly 
beaten like a brute, — all according to law." There were five 
objectionable elements in the law of slavery, — property in 
man, abrogation of marriage, absence of the parental relation, 
the closing of the gates of knowledge, and the appropriation 
of all toil, — at the end of the consideration of each of which 
points the orator would exclaim: "Sir, is not slavery bar- 
barous?" Consideration of the practical results of slavery 
led to a valuable and exhaustive comparison of the North and 
the South, similar to Helper's comparison, and like the latter 
overwhelmingly in favor of the North. The character of the 
slaveholder was shown up by the usual quotations from 
statesmen and authors, and by a painstaking citation of 
facts drawn from the whole range of history. 

When the speaker closed. Senator Chestnut of South Caro- 
lina rose for a brief reply. Although he was sorry that the 
orator of the day was back at his post, he would not attack 
him and make a hero of him, one ''who had been crawling 
through the back doors to whine at the feet of the British 
aristocracy, craving pity, and reaping a rich harvest of con- 
tempt, the slanderer of states and of men." Thereupon 



58 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

Sumner, who had been claiming that slavery made the slave- 
holder barbarous, rose and made one of the finest retorts in 
the records of the Senate. ''This is a better illustration than 
any I have cited. I ask the Senate that I may use it in my 
speech as an appendix." ^ 

1 The Congressional Globe, 36 Cong., 1 Sess., Vol. Ill, p. 2590 fif. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE POPULAR DISCUSSION OF SLAVERY 

JOHN Brown's raid heightened the discussion of slavery 
among the people at large as well as in Congress. 
Editorials on the subject became more informing and more 
full of argument, news items more inclusive of the happenings 
in the slavery world ; in the large dailies and religious week- 
lies, at church, at home, in the store and in the street, slavery 
was brought home to men and women in every conceivable 
form. By the very progress of events countless new currents 
and eddies in pubhc opinion were forming, which the politi- 
cians of the time found it necessary to take into account 
before daring to formulate their platforms, and which the 
present generation must understand if it would appreciate 
the politics of the period. 

The cruel, the unusual sides of slavery, as the institution 
existed in the South, were continually held up to view. On 
the point, did the Southern masters ever burn their slaves 
at the stake ? angry colloquies were waged both in Congress 
and before the people ; the Northerner, answering the ques- 
tion in the affirmative, was a ''liar and a scoundrel," his 

' statements were ''utterly false," they were "foul and false 
slanders." There was no retraction on either side. Horace 
Greeley set to work and in widely quoted articles on the 
editorial page of the New York Tribune produced what 

jj seemed irrefutable evidence. In a careful historical survey 
covering the previous thirty years twelve occurrences of the 
crime were brought to light. The St. Louis Evening News 



60 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

now republished, and the Tribune copied, the accounts which 
had appeared originally in the St. Louis papers, of a lynching 
of three negroes the previous year in that state by a crowd 
of one thousand people. The details of the crime, the 
stripping of the negro to the waist, his desperation, the fire 
licking up the body and its quick effects seen in the writhing 
of the victun and his shrieks and appeals for mercy, his 
clutching at the hot chains and dropping them, his pitiable 
death, all w^ere described in the most harrowing fashion, 
obviously with the conscious effort to inflame the passions 
and sensibilities of the readers. Thousands and tens of 
thousands of people read Greeley's presentation of the 
matter, written in his most vigorous style.^ Numerous 
instances of the crime in 1860, taken from Southern papers 
themselves, were brought to light in further proof of the 
Northern charges. Two negroes were burned in Arkansas 
and a subscription was taken up to indemnify the owners for 
their loss. The Vicksburg Sun reported the burning of a 
negro in Mississippi, "whose fate was decreed by a council 
of highly respectable gentlemen." The Augusta (Georgia) 
Chronicle told of a case in that state, the Columbus (Georgia) 
Chronicle of another in the same state. In each instance 
the victim was guilty of some fiendish crime, murder, arson, 
or rape, which richly deserved severe punishment. The 
frequent lynching of white murderers and horse thieves on 
the wild frontiers of the country, in Iowa, Nebraska, and 
Arkansas, passed almost unnoticed ; only let the unfortu- 
nate wrongdoer be a black slave and his murderers 
Southern slaveholders, and the Repubhcan papers teemed 
with glaring accounts. 

The oft-repeated descriptions of the slave auction scarcely 
need mention. As may be expected, the disgusting points 

1 The New York Tribune, March 12 and 20, 1860 ; for a very excited 
speech on the subject, see the Congressional Globe, 36 Cong., 1 Sess,, 
Vol. II, p. 1032. 



THE POPULAR DISCUSSION OF SLAVER^ 61 

were those most dwelt upon, the examination of the physical 
characteristics of the slave, his teeth, legs and arms, and the 
coarse, indelicate questions often addressed by the bidders 
to the young female slaves. Few could read the story with- 
out pity and anger. Charges, already quoted in this book,i 
and scores of others of a similar nature, concerned the denial 
to the slave of legal marriage, education, and wages, the 
cruel punishments, and the brandings with the hot irons. 
The masters' advertisements of runaways were instanced, 
with their heartless descriptions of the tell-tale physical 
marks and wounds on the bodies of the culprits, and the 
equally cruel advertisements of the slave-catchers' well- 
trained packs of dogs, guaranteed in every case to secure the 
recapture of fugitives. 

To set forth the lengthy notices of all these details, re- 
peated over and over again, is beyond the compass of this 
book; their importance, however, can hardly be overesti- 
mated, for they show the spirit of a large part of the Northern 
press, the kind of reading that was daily laid before multi- 
tudes. The accounts were exaggerated, one-sided, and told 
for a purpose ; from them all, critical scholars could not con- 
struct an accurate account of the institution in question. 
Nevertheless, they inflamed and influenced men's minds, 
and constituted an important chapter in the history of the 
times. 

Defenses of slavery, although seldom indulged in at any 
length in Congress, from time to time appeared in the pub- 
he prints. Said Edward A. Pollard, in Black Diamonds 
Gathered in the Darkeij Houses of the South: "Surely God 
proceeds mysteriously to us in his works of Love and Re- 
demption. . . . The translation of African savages from 
their country as slaves — a great, improving, and progressive 
work of civilization — we also discover to be one of the largest 
works of Christianity, endowing a people with a knowledge 

1 See pp. 56-58. 



62 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

of the Christian God, and they, in turn, enUghtening us as to 
his Grace, and the solemn and precious mystery of the con- 
version of the soul to Christ. ... I think the remarkable 
characteristic of our 'peculiar institution,' in improving the 
African race humanly, socially, and religiously, is alone suffi- 
cient to justify it. . . . He has been plucked from the 
wilds of Africa and saved to Christ." ^ The New York 
Herald regarded slavery ''as a great blessing in the tropical 
climates, and in the Southern states of our Republic, a bless- 
ing to the slave, to the master, and to the whole of this 
Union, one of the great sources of our national prosperity." ^ 
President Lord of Dartmouth College praised slavery and 
believed that "without a miracle" the Yankees themselves 
would yet call for slaves in New England.^ 

According to Congressman Reagan of Texas, to free the 
slaves would be a crime against reason and humanity ; the 
four million negro slaves were better fed, clothed, and pro- 
tected from violence and wrong, more inteUigent and pos- 
sessed of more religious advantages, than any other four 
millions of the human race anywhere. Another Southerner 
believed that to free the blacks would amount virtually to 
an annexation of the Southern states to Hayti and the Congo, 
for it would estabhsh here the same state of things that 
existed there, free polygamy, free laziness, free stealing from 
the nearest sheepfold or henroost, and seizure as slaves of 
the most docile by the most savage. Slavery was simply a 
means of repressing the liberty of idleness. The masters 
did not permit their slaves to live as savages or as vagabonds, 
but set them to work in fields with competent guides. To 
force a negro to work enough to pay for his housing and keep 
from infancy to old age was no easy matter, and inasmuch as 

1 Black Diamonds Gathered in the Darkey Houses of the South, by Edward 
A. Pollard, New York, 1859, p. 82. f. 

2 The New York Herald, June 2, 1860. 
» The Liberator, March 23, 1860. 



THE POPULAR DISCUSSION OF SLAVERY 63 

no white man could be expected to do this for nothing, perma- 
nent property in the black and ownership of his industrial 
product was guaranteed to the white as inducement to under- 
take the task. Where negroes were numerous, there was 
no alternative between discipline and freedom. ''The in- 
dustrial education of a negro multitude cannot be managed 
without fixed and responsible masters, endowed with all 
necessary authority by law, and stimulated by some surer 
reward than the chance wages to be derived from negro con- 
sciousness and negro gratitude. No man would house and 
clothe and feed a family of negroes from birth to maturity for 
such amount of work as they might please to give him after 
they were grown up."^ 

Touching those phases of slavery that came nearer home. 
Northern people formed more intelligent ideas than concern- 
ing conditions in the South. Slaves were everywhere ap- 
pearing out of the South, now peacefully seeking aid and 
comfort, now fugitive on the way to Canada, now in the 
company of their masters ; and each made his own appeal, 
silent or otherwise, to the freedom-loving people about him. 

Mused Horace Greeley in the New York Independent: 
" K poor woman, born of an unfortunate race and of the 
least desirable color, calls at your fireside or at your place of 
business, and interrupts your labors or your meditations with 
a request that you read her soiled and sweat-stained papers. 
Their purport, which you have already guessed, is this ; she 
lives in Maryland or eastern Virginia and has a daughter, 
fourteen to sixteen years of age, who is about to be sent to 
New Orleans and there to be sold to the highest bidder, unless 
she can ransom her from slavery by the payment of several 
hundred dollars, towards which she solicits a subscription 
from you. ... In your perplexity your wandering eye 
rests on some representation of the Man of Sorrows, who had 
not where to lay his head, and your mind recalls the burden 
1 The Liberator, September 28, 1860. 



64 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

of his benign utterance : ' Inasmuch as ye have done it to one 
of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me !' 
What is the natural result of this timely recollection ? " ^ 

One Sunday morning a Uttle slave girl appeared in the 
Sunday School of Henry Ward Beecher's church in Brooklyn, 
New York ; her mother was a slave in Washington and her 
father a slave-dealer. Five of her brothers and sisters 
had already been sold South, and in the late Christmas holi- 
days came the word that she, the sixth and last, was to be 
sold for breeding purposes for eight hundred dollars. After 
some difficulty the victim was brought North and now 
sought alms. This was the story told to the fashionable 
gathering of four hundred white boys and girls, none of them 
whiter than the httle slave. The special collection of two 
hundred dollars only inadequately represented the sjanpathy 
aroused. The great preacher himself, at the end of the 
morning sermon, brought the slave to the platform and in 
simple but eloquent language presented her cause to the 
large congregation. The shameful fate was prevented. 
Added Greeley the next morning in the Tribune: ''How 
noble is chivalry ! To beget white daughters and then have 
them sold as breeders !" ^ 

Such an occurrence was not uncommon in the Northern 
churches. Cards in the newspapers often called for the 
charity; on several occasions the Republican members of 
the national House of Representatives at Washington gen- 
erously gave their aid for the same cause. 

Again mused the Tribune editor: "A hunted and weary 
fugitive crosses your doorstep, imploring protection and sus- 
tenance. He has traveled through many long and tedious 
nights, avoiding cities and thronged highways, keeping as 
far to the woods and traveling by night only, through dew- 
drenched weeds and briers which have torn most of his 

I The New York Independent, October 4, 1860. 
^ The N&w York Tribune, February 6, 1860. 



THE POPULAR DISCUSSION OF SLAVERY 65 

coarse and flimsy garments from his limbs, guided only by 
the often shrouded light of the North Star. Perplexed 
by what seems a divided duty, you naturally ask, 'What 
would my Saviour desire me to do in the premises ?' " ^ 

Owen Lovejoy's answer to the question was : ''I have no 
more hesitation in helping a fugitive slave than I have in 
snatching a lamb from the jaws of a wolf, or disengaging an 
infant from the talons of an eagle. Not a bit. Long enough 
has the nation crouched and cowered in the presence of this 
stupendous wrong." Thousands felt the same and acted on 
their feelings. 

Forcible rescues of fugitives out of the hands of the United 
States officials, who had arrested them under the national 
fugitive slave law, constantly occurred. The famous Ottawa 
rescue was fresh in the public mind throughout the year. 
In that small town in Illinois, while the first news of John 
Brown's raid was spreading over the country, a large mob, 
amid intense excitement, forcibly rescued a negro out of the 
hands of the officers of the law and secured his escape. John 
Hossack and two associates, leaders in the affray, were 
promptly arrested, conveyed to Chicago for safe keeping, 
and after long delay finally brought to trial. Conviction, 
fines, and short terms of imprisonment followed, but through 
the inability of the prisoners to pay the fines and costs the 
imprisonment seemed destined to be very long. The presi- 
dential campaign was now far advanced ; but the mayor of 
Chicago, a strong antislavery man and editor of the leading 
Repubhcan paper of the Northwest, had the strength of his 
convictions and opened his office for public subscriptions. 
In a few days' time, from all over the Northwestern states, 
seventeen hundred dollars poured in, and in a very exciting 
public meeting, with the election but four weeks off, the 
prisoners were released. Antislavery had produced a new 
hero at the very moment the people were called upon to 

1 The New York Independent, October 4, 1860. 



66 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

deliver their judgment at the polls. Hossack took his 
position alongside of Brown, Helper, Worth, and Hyatt. 

Late in April there was a notable rescue at Troy, New 
York. A crowd of one thousand people, including many free 
negroes, gathered about the office of the United States Com- 
missioner, where that official, on testimony of witnesses from 
Virginia, had just remanded to his old master a negro who 
had long hved quietly in the community as a hard-working 
mechanic ; the prisoner was about to be taken from the 
building when the deputy sheriff arrived with a writ of 
habeas corpus, and while this was being served, the crowd, 
with tremendous cheering and enthusiasm, rushed the offi- 
cers off their feet. In the tumult the prisoner escaped to the 
river, was carried across to the opposite shore in a skiff, was 
there again arrested, but again promptly rescued, this time 
never to be recaptured. Similar cases were reported in the 
local newspapers throughout the spring and early summer in 
various sections. Fugitive slaves, going North, were re- 
ported at Auburn, New York ; New York City ; Boston, 
Greenfield, Massachusetts, Rochester, Cincinnati, etc. ; at 
New York and Philadelphia, without any excitement, cap- 
tured fugitives were rendered back to their masters. 

Over against the law of Congress under which these rescues 
were declared a crime and punished by the national govern- 
ment, were the so-called personal liberty laws of the North- 
ern states. These statutes, which sought to frustrate the 
national law, were under another name the most practical 
nullification laws ever set in motion by states against a law 
of the United States. Soon after the enactment of the ob- 
jectionable fugitive slave law of 1850 Vermont led the way in 
resistance by declaring that state officials, under pain of fine 
and imprisonment, should not help execute the national law ; 
the use of the jails in the state was forbidden to the Southern 
masters, the Attorney-General of the state was required to 
defend the slaves, and to the latter trial by jury was guar- 



THE POPULAR DISCUSSION OF SLAVERY 67 

anteed ; to take a fugitive unlawfully from the state was for- 
bidden under pain of fine and imprisonment ; slaves brought 
into the state were declared free, and persons attempting to 
hold such as slaves might be punished by a sentence of from 
one to fifteen years in the penitentiary and by a fine of not 
over two thousand dollars. The Michigan legislature fol- 
lowed in like tenor; then came Wisconsin with the most 
extreme of all such laws. In this Western state, in addition 
to the impediments created in Vermont, there was habeas 
corpus for the black on the mere statement of the Attorney- 
General ; all the expenses of the action were to be paid by 
the state, and to take a negro out of the state was most 
severely prohibited. Almost every Northern state had laws 
on the subject with varying restrictions and provisions, 
enacted during the decade, 1850-1860, and in active opera- 
tion in 1860. States that prohibited officers and citizens 
from aiding in execution of the national law were Maine, 
New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, 
Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Michi- 
gan and Wisconsin ; states that denied the use of all pubHc 
buildings to the master were Maine, Vermont, Rhode Island 
and Michigan ; states that provided defense for the fugitives 
were Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsyl- 
vania, Michigan, and Wisconsin; states that declared all 
fugitives within the state free were Maine, New Hampshire, 
and Vermont ; New Hampshire declared free any black 
within her borders.^ 

The two sets of laws, so antagonistic in their provisions and 
purposes, the one national and the other state, led to many 
a conflict in the courts, one of the most famous of which now 

^ See a valuable report on the subject by the joint committee of the 
two houses of the Virginia Legislature on Harper's Ferry, in the New 
York Herald, January 30, 1860 ; copies of all the laws are in the appendix 
to this report. The New York Tribune, February 15, 1860, gives a report 
of a committee of the New York legislature on the subject. In 1860 there 
were some attempts to make these state laws more stringent. 



68 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

came to a head. Sherman M. Booth, the editor of an aboh- 
tion paper in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was arrested in 1854 
for aiding in the rescue of the fugitive Joshua Glover from 
the Milwaukee County jail. Freed by the habeas corpus of 
the state Supreme Court, then twice rearrested and twice 
again freed by the same means. Booth for a time was lost 
sight of in a contest between the Supreme Court of the 
United States, which insisted on asserting its power to review 
a habeas corpus writ of a state court, and the state Supreme 
Court, which insisted on declaring that habeas corpus was 
original in the states and not subject to review by the Su- 
preme Court of the United States. Due to complications 
in the composition of the state tribunal, this body by a vote 
of one to one refused to obey the order of the court at Wash- 
ington to remand Booth to prison, and for several years the 
latter was free. Finally the membership in the state court 
changed, and in March, 1860, came another order from 
Washington for the culprit's arrest, and again a one to one 
vote in the state court, but this time against a habeas corpus 
writ for the prisoner, who was now kept closely guarded in 
the Milwaukee Custom House. There he remained for five 
or six months, in prison for his opinions, another antislavery 
hero, a fit companion for Brown, Helper, Worth, Hyatt, and 
Hossack. Presently he was rescued by a mob ; twice, amid 
intense excitement and uproar, his rearrest was attempted 
but frustrated, on one occasion by an armed guard of sixty- 
two citizens; at last, however, he was taken while off his 
guard, on his way home from a Republican campaign meet- 
ing. The presidential election was now less than four weeks 
off, so that at that crisis Booth, like Hossack, loomed large 
in the public mind, especially in the antislavery Northwest. 
The list of antislavery heroes in all parts of the country was 
large. For almost the entire year Booth's case helped to es- 
trange section from section, the aggrieved South from the out- 
raged North . To the one section, which charged that the other 



THE POPULAR DISCUSSION OF SLAVERY 69 

was guilty of rank nullification of United States law and re- 
sistance to the United States courts, the constant reply was 
that Wisconsin was but standing out for right and freedom. 

Other cases of judicial conflict served to fan the sectional 
fires. On technicahties the Governors of Ohio and of Iowa 
refused to give up to Virginia certain members of the John 
Brown band who had fled to their states ; Virginia affected 
to feel highly insulted, and the Governor and the legislature 
in oflScial documents, which were more or less widely pub- 
lished in the new^spapers, made the most of the situation for 
the Southern cause. On the ground that in Ohio it was no 
crime to steal slaves the Governor of the state refused to 
extradite to Tennessee a man accused of this crime in that 
state, and not until the formal charges were altered did the 
Ohio Executive yield; for the same reason he would not 
give up to Kentucky a man accused there of aiding slaves to 
escape. Similarly, the Governor of Illinois displeased the 
Governor of Kentucky. All these cases achieved promi- 
nence. 

When not fugitive, but traveling in the North with their 
masters. Southern slaves were liable to capture and libera- 
tion by the radical abohtionists and free negroes, either 
acting forcibly or by the ever-present habeas corpus. The 
Savannah Blues, a famous miUtary organization, set upon 
in this way in New York, saved their servants only by stout 
physical resistance. A master, taking his slaves from Vir- 
ginia to Missouri by boat and coming ashore at Cincinnati, 
saved his property by the favor of a judge, who refused a 
habeas corpus for the slaves on the ground that slaveholders 
must be accorded some rights on the dividing river between 
slavery and freedom. Terrifying threats were held over a 
pleasure party near Detroit. This case arose out of the 
defiance of a law then recently enacted by the Michigan 
legislature, inflicting fine and imprisonment on all who 
brought slaves into the state. Although cordially invited 



70 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

by Northern railroads, including the Michigan Central, 
the coming into the state of the party of excursionists, be- 
tween two and three hundred in number, was greeted at the 
small town of Marshall, Michigan, with the following hand- 
bill :" Republicans to the rescue! Two hundred Southern 
slaveholders with their slaves will pass through our city this 
afternoon and will dine at the depot. This is a flagrant 
violation of the laws of the state. . . . Republicans to 
arms ! Strike for the memory of John Brown !" 

The Lemmon case in the courts of the state of New York 
brought the judicial side of this question of the freedom of 
the personal servants of Southern masters in the free states 
prominently before the pubhc. In 1850 Jonathan Lemmon, 
his wife, and eight slaves, on their way from Virginia to 
Texas, came to New York, where a writ of habeas corpus 
led to the liberation of the blacks, who forthwith fled to 
Canada. Although the property was gone beyond recovery, 
Lemmon carried the case to the Supreme Court of the state, 
where after some years the original action against Lemmon 
was affirmed. The Court of Appeals was next reached, and 
there in the spring of 1860, while politics and the ''irrepres- 
sible conflict" were already agitating the people as never 
before, the case was argued by Charles O'Conor on the 
side of slavery against William M. Evarts on the side of 
freedom. The decision affirmed the position of the lower 
courts, and so far as the state tribunals were concerned de- 
clared that no black could be held a slave in the state. Be- 
cause of the intense popular interest the arguments of the 
rival lawyers were widely published, and when the result 
was known it was deemed on all sides that a strong blow had 
been struck for freedom. Yet although in line with a long 
series of precedents, the decision was plainly a denial of the 
principles of the more famous Dred Scott case in the United 
States Supreme Court, and according to common expectation 
would soon be carried on appeal by the state of Virginia to 



THE POPULAR DISCUSSION OF SLAVERY 71 

that highest national tribunaL There, beyond a doubt, a 
decision definitely nationalizing slavery would be given, and 
the Lemmon case would take its place in the judicial annals 
of the country, infamous or famous according to the point of 
view. From this the nation was saved by the outbreak of 
war.^ 

Occasionally Northern John Browns raided the border line 
of slavery. Near Hannibal, Missouri, according to the Daily 
Missouri Republican of St. Louis, the thieving operations of 
aboUtionists contrived to carry four Missouri negroes across 
the river to freedom in Illinois ; an exciting chase followed 
and the blacks were recovered, although the robbers escaped. 
Excitement in the vicinity was at fever heat. In La Grange 
County, in the same state, two white men were caught by 
the regulators running off a negro ; after confession the cul- 
prits were hung, then cut down, whipped and ordered from 
the state. 

To retahate for these various and sundry attacks on their 
property, abundant opportunity was afforded to the South- 
erners along the border line by the presence in the free states 
of the free negroes. These unfortunates differed in no way 
from slaves in color and habits and could frequently be kid- 
napped and hurried into the slave states and converted into 
money. Their very presence near slavery invited man- 
stealing. Many were the exciting kidnapping tales going 
the rounds of the papers. The Lawrence Sentinel of Law- 
rence, Kansas, complained that hardly a paper in that terri- 
tory failed day after day to contain notices of such a case. 
In some places there were organized gangs to carry on the 
traffic. The crime was reported from Iowa City, Iowa, 
Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Watertown, New York, Sandusky 
and Cincinnati, Ohio, Galena and Grafton, Illinois. 

1 O'Conor's argument, in abstract, was published in the New York 
Times, January 25, 1860; that of Evarts in full appeared in the New 
York Independent in the month of April of the same year. 



72 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

The following story of the last-named case appeared 
originally in the Chicago Tribune and was copied in many an 
Eastern paper. Scores of equally harrowing tales could be 
collected. Five colored men were decoyed into a grocery 
store in Clifton, Illinois, and there suddenly confronted by 
seven or eight heavily armed whites ; after a tussle in which 
two of the blacks escaped, the three remaining ones were 
handcuffed, thrown into a wagon, driven off to the Illinois 
Central Railroad, and with the connivance of Irish section 
hands and of a compliant railroad conductor were placed on 
the train and taken to St. Louis. Disposal of the booty was 
not so easy. In answer to the query: ^'Who is your mas- 
ter?" one of the prisoners averred that he was then and 
always had been free, and the second refused to answer: 
whipping and hunger failing to change the story the two were 
sold South. While this was going on, one Aim6 Pernard, 
a farmer living near the city, whom the third victim, called 
Jim, claimed as his former master, was visited by one of the 
kidnappers with offers to buy the chances of capture of his 
slave after five years' absence; one hundred dollars was 
offered ; the offer was trebled and quadrupled, and at last 
multiplied by ten, but all to no purpose ; Pernard would not 
sell. But his suspicions were aroused. With some search 
he located his property, paid the customary fees allowed by 
the laws of the state to the captors of fugitive slaves, to- 
gether with the jailor's fees, and took his slave home. Free 
papers followed, a railroad ticket was purchased, and Jim 
was sent back home to his wife and family, a free man. The 
story was dressed out in the most extravagant language. 
" * Niggers have no feeling. It don't hurt them to have their 
domestic life made the plaything of white men's cupidity 
and lust,' say the man-sellers. That strong woman's joy 
as she clasped her husband in her arms, her devout thanks- 
giving to God that her life was not left dark ; her breaking 
down under the flood of emotion which the glad event 



THE POPULAR DISCUSSION OF SLAVERY 73 

aroused, her sobs and plaints interrupted only by the united 
prayers to the Father of whites and blacks ahke ; the deep 
feeling that Jim displayed ; the delicious joy, ennobled by the 
new consciousness of freedom and security in the possession 
of a wife and home, — these, leaving not a dry eye in the 
little crowd of onlookers, disprove the charge." ^ 

As unfailing as were these stories and episodes in regard to 
the domestic phases of slavery, they were probably equalled 
in prominence and general interest as news items by the 
notices of the continued progress of the foreign slave trade. 
Hardly a single issue of any prominent newspaper failed to 
contain something on the abominable traffic. Native Afri- 
cans, as for two hundred and fifty years past, were still 
being kidnapped and brought into servitude, either clandes- 
tinely in the United States or openly in the Spanish province 
of Cuba. 

At the very end of 1859 the yacht Wanderer, amid much 
rejoicing on the part of the Southern people, landed several 
hundred Africans on the shores of Georgia. The Wildfire, 
sailing from New York, December, 1859, in the vicinity of 
the Congo River in Africa secured a cargo of six hundred and 
three negroes, of whom five hundred and twenty remained 
when the vessel was captured off Cuba ; the William, leaving 
the Congo nine days before the Wildfire, with seven hundred 
and ninety blacks, arrived in Cuban waters to be taken with 
five hundred and thirteen of her victims still on board. On 
Christmas Eve, 1859, the Orion was seized off the coast of 
Africa and conveyed to the Island of St. Helena, having 
eight hundred and seventy-four negroes on board, six hundred 
and seventy-four males and two hundred females ; one hun- 
dred and forty-six died on the short voyage. It would be 
tedious to relate the details of every capture. The New 

^ The Albany Evening Journal, August 17, 1860. The ladies of Clifton 
thanked Pernard for his generosity and invited him to Clifton ; Pernard 
declined the invitation. This correspondence was published. 



74 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

York Evening Post published a list of eight-five American 
vessels apprehended as slave traders in the previous eighteen 
months, while the New York Herald at the same time placed 
the number as at least one hundred. Almost every day, 
and certainly every week, the metropolitan dailies reported 
captures and escapes. One slaver in four, it was estimated, 
was taken. 

The traffic, which had gradually declined during the decade 
of the forties and perhaps even to a later date, was now 
greater than for a number of years and was rapidly increasing. 
According to the statistics of the British Foreign Office, 
approximately one hundred and thirty-five thousand natives 
were exported from Africa as slaves in 1835 ; in 1859 from 
thirty-five to forty thousand arrived in Cuba, principally 
Havana, which was the world's greatest slave market. The 
charges that a large number of fresh Africans reached the 
Southern shores of the United States were not proved.^ 

Profits, which were the motive of the nefarious commerce, 
were enormous. Secured in Africa for a mere song, ten to 
fifteen dollars each, every negro safely landed in Cuba 
yielded from three to four hundred dollars net gain, or three 
hundred thousand dollars on a cargo of one thousand ; one 
cargo of four hundred and fifty was sold in Trinidad for six 
hundred and fifty dollars each, and in the United States, 
where prices of blacks had increased almost one hundred 
per cent in the past decade and were then ranging from 
two thousand to twenty-five hundred dollars for able-bodied 
''American negroes," much more than six hundred and fifty 
dollars must have been realized for fresh, able-bodied 
Africans. It was commonly stated that if three out of four 
of the slave ships suffered capture and one got through in 
safety, the owner would feel repaid ; if the cargo was landed, 
the loss of the vessel was but little. 

* Beyond the several hundred brought in by the Wanderer, no definite 
data was furnished, although various locjil papers in the Gulf States 
chronicled the arrival of small parties. 



THE POPULAR DISCUSSION OF SLAVERY 75 

In Cuba the strongest stay of the market was the pros- 
perity of the sugar industry, in the United States the pros- 
perity of the sugar and cotton industries. 

Descriptions abounded of the passage of a slaver over to 
American waters; the following is typical. "The scene 
between the decks was shocking. Stowed in a sitting post- 
ure, with their knees drawn up close to their breast, were 
over five hundred human beings, whose skin was black, 
mostly children and young persons, and some women. So 
close were they packed that they could not move, and could 
hardly breathe. In this suffocating position they were strug- 
gling for life. The strong were killing the weak to make 
room for themselves, and that a little more of God's air might 
be had. Disease was among them in many forms, and 
especially opthalmia. Seasick, homesick, starving, crying 
for air and water, these poor wretches crowded their floating 
charnel house. But the slavers were merciful, for they 
helped the slave to die. When one was sick nigh unto death, 
they would kindly assist him or her overboard, before the 
soul had left the body. The quality of their mercy was not 
strained either, for they sometimes would substitute another 
death for drowning — the negro was knocked on the head 
with an axe. Disease breaking out, it was supposed to be 
contagious, and the sufferers were made away with without 
any scruples of the troublesome thing called conscience. 
An idea of the mortahty on board of the Tavernier may be 
formed when I state that after her capture by the Viper, 
upon her passage over to St. Helena, whither she was sent 
in charge of a prize crew, nearly one hundred of her negroes 
died. This was during a run of only about ten days dura- 
tion." 

Although probably but few of the unfortunates reached 
the United States, the proslavery administration in four 
important respects was yet charged with responsibility for 
the existence of the tr^de beyond her borders ; at New York 



76 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

and the other cities on the sea board, where the ships were 
fitted out, the revenue laws were but poorly enforced ; the 
naval squadrons in Cuban and African waters, charged with 
the duty of suppressing the trade, were hampered by inade- 
quate laws, regulations, and instructions; the proslavery 
United States Senate refused to make these laws more strin- 
gent ; and the United States courts were far from strict in 
punishing infractions of the law. 

New York was the chief commercial depot for the fitting 
out of the slavers, just as Havana was the chief market for 
the sale of slaves, and few ships, destined for the illegal trade, 
experienced any difficulty in securing from the New York 
Custom House legal clearance papers. With a bribe to the 
proper officials of from five hundred to four thousand dollars 
the intended slaver could easily get away, although proper 
inspection would readily disclose its unlawful purpose and 
render it liable to seizure. A lawful voyage was scarcely 
compatible with the following telltale cargo : lumber, which 
could not be used in Africa but was intended for the purpose 
of building slave decks ; many buckets and sponges to wash 
down the slaves ; disinfectants for use on the decks ; stills 
for cooking purposes ; casks, ostensibly to be used in the palm 
oil trade on the African coast but in reality for the carrying 
of fresh water on board the slavers ; and finally various trin- 
kets, looking-glasses, handkerchiefs, calico prints, denims, 
beads, etc., of practical value only among the simple-minded 
Africans. Such a list was evidence enough that the ship was 
bound for the Congo coast for slave-trading purposes, — evi- 
dence enough to the public if not to the officials. 

The nation's responsibility was a joint one, shared by 
Great Britain. Under the Webster-Ashburton treaty the 
two powers were cooperating with each other, though not 
very harmoniously and successfully, for the suppression of 
the traffic. Each was maintaining a squadron of naval 
vessels in both Cuban and African waters, and each was 



THE POPULAR DISCtlSSION OF SLAVERY 77 

guaranteeing to the crews of its vessels the payment of prize 
money for captures; but where the Enghsh, with their 
swift steam vessels and the certain assurance of twenty- 
five dollars for every negro taken, made six captures, the 
Americans with sailing vessels or worn-out steamships and 
the same prospect of reward, took but one. The instructions 
of the Washington government to its representatives were 
clearly inadequate and were justly criticized by Lord John 
Russell of the British Foreign Office and by the world in 
general. When the American officials made a mistake in 
carrying out their instructions, they were personally liable 
to damages; this rendered them too careful. They could 
take no vessel which was palpably equipped for receiving 
slaves but had not yet received its cargo ; no American could 
capture a vessel with a foreign flag, and vessels without a 
flag and without papers also went unmolested, and thus, 
when the time of danger arrived, many a ship from New 
York escaped merely by hoisting a foreign flag or by throw- 
ing overboard both flag and papers. On the other hand, 
if a New York slaver fell in with a British man-of-war, she 
could save herself by her United States flag, for the Southern 
statesmen who had long directed American diplomacy, in- 
sisted that to allow Englishmen to board an American vessel 
under such circumstances amounted in reality to submitting 
to the accursed right of search, and slave trade or no slave 
trade, this could never be allowed.^ Sometimes the American 
trader, flying the American flag, could be induced by the 
British to throw overboard its flag and papers and become 
a British prize, by the offer of immunity to the officers and 
crew and the threat that, if they did not give up, they would 
be turned over to the Americans and sent home for trial. 

^ In 1858 numerous captures by the English in the Gulf of Mexico of 
slave traders flying the American flag almost led to war, and were only 
stopped by President Buchanan by a vigorous assertion of the Southern 
principle. 



78 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

These principles, complained the British, simply granted 
practical immunity, made the slave trade easy, and led to 
the hoisting of the American flag by all slavers, whatever 
their nationality. 

Over all attempts to improve these defects of national 
policy by means of legislation the Democratic United States 
Senate held an efficient veto ; two stringent bills on the sub- 
ject, drawn from the Republican point of view, one intro- 
duced by Senator Seward of New York and the other by 
Senator Wilson of Massachusetts, were defeated by de- 
cisive votes. 

Finally the courts were blamed. In spite of the Con- 
gressional prohibition of the traffic and in spite of the threat 
of the death penalty for participation in the same, the traffic 
was flourishing with impunity, and in the whole history of the 
country not one man had been executed for breaking the law. 
United States District Attorney Roosevelt of New York, who 
was bound to President Buchanan by social ties and who 
therefore may fairly be assumed to have spoken the mind of 
the President, even went so far as to state publicly that the 
latter would '' probably pardon" any one convicted under 
the law ; he thought that public opinion had ceased to regard 
the slave trade as piracy and would not uphold the infliction 
of the death penalty. Judge Magrath of the United States 
District Court at Charleston, South Carolina, in the case 
of Captain Currie of the yacht Wanderer, ruled that under 
the law of 1820 to buy blacks in Africa and bring them to 
the United States was not piracy ; in order to secure a con- 
viction under this decision it must be proved that the pris- 
oner had actually helped steal and enslave the blacks on the 
African shores before embarkation. In Alabama in the 
same court Judge Jones declared that under the United States 
law it was not piracy to buy and hold in slavery lately im- 
ported blacks after they had once gotten into the country. 
How short the step from these decisions to a declaration by 



THE POPULAR DISCUSSION OF SLAVERY 79 

the United States Supreme Court affirming them ! and this 
was precisely what was feared by many, that the admin- 
istration was getting ready for the opening of the slave trade 
through the Supreme Court of the United States. In the 
face of actual facts, the pious sentences of the President's 
annual message were not taken seriously.^ 

In the North practically all parties united in condemning 
the inhuman traffic, Republicans, Democrats, and Aboli- 
tionists ; but while the Democrats generally refrained from 
attacking the administration policy openly, the Republicans 
and Abolitionists subjected it to bitter criticism. The slave- 
breeding Border states for economic reasons stood with the 
Republicans in favor of the strict enforcement of the law. 
Although proslavery, they desired to restrict the supply of 
slaves in order to keep up prices ; additional Africans would 
increase the supply and cheapen prices. The extreme South, 
and especially the growing Southwest, on economic grounds, 
took the opposite position; there were mineral deposits to 
open, virgin fields yet to bring under cultivation, broad 
acres, then under foreign flags, perhaps soon to be annexed 
and claimed to slavery. To develop these resources the 
labor supply should be increased, not diminished ; the foreign 
slave trade should be legalized, not prohibited. This was 
the almost unanimous position of the Southern Commercial 
Convention, held in Vicksburg, Mississippi, in 1859, and of 
thirty or more Mississippi newspapers. By reopening the 

1 It should be added that in October, 1860, the part owner of the ship 
Orion was convicted in Boston of engaging in the slave trade and sen- 
tenced to two years in jail and to pay a fine of $2000 ; the first mate got 
two years in jail and the second mate twenty-one months. This was the 
work of a Northern jury; no Southern jury ever convicted. One ruse 
employed by an American trader was to carry two crews and two sets of 
officers, American and foreign, generally Spanish or Portuguese ; then, if 
captured by an American ship, it would be claimed that the crew and 
officers were foreign and the boat foreign also, the Americans being merely 
passengers; if captm-ed by the English, the opposite claim would be 
made. 



80 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

trade the large class of poor whites, too poor to own slaves, 
might be drawn over to the side of slavery ; their farms were 
small and were gradually growing smaller under the encroach- 
ments of the large landholders. Cheapen the price of slaves, 
and these thousands of small holders, thus enabled to own 
blacks, would be enlisted in the defense of the institution. 
Slavery was now proving a blessing; why not, therefore, 
erase from the statute books a law enacted when the South 
still believed slavery to be a curse? ''I tell you, fellow 
Democrats," said a prominent Georgian in the national 
Democratic convention at Charleston, South Carolina, 
''that the African slave trader is the true Union man. I 
tell you that the slave trade of Virginia is more immoral, 
more unchristian, in every possible point of view, than the 
African slave trade, which goes to Africa and brings a heathen 
and worthless man here and makes him a useful man, Chris- 
tianizes him, and sends him and his posterity down the stream 
of time to join in the blessings of civilization." It was 
certainly right to go to Africa and get a slave for a few dollars, 
if it was right to go to Virginia and get one for two thousand 
dollars. 

An unexpected event served to bring the discussion to a 
head. Three slavers, seized with their cargoes in Cuban 
waters, were taken by their American captors, contrary to 
their custom, not to Liberia, for that was at the moment 
impracticable in the wretched condition of the slaves, but 
to hastily constructed barracks at Key West, Florida. What 
should the nation do with its new charges? An earnest 
debate followed. Bring the fifteen hundred Africans to the 
North, said some, and let them find homes and work there 
as free men ; put them to work as slaves on the Southern 
railroads, said others ; still others would have them let out 
as apprentices. By a state law no free negro could be brought 
into the state of Florida; why not, then, pass a Northern 
''Personal Liberty" law in the state legislature, queried a 



THE POPULAR DISCUSSION OF SLAVERY 81 

local Florida paper, annul the national slave trade law, make 
it a crime to carry out this national law, and imprison all 
who attempted to carry the Key West Africans out of the 
state ? If a slave becomes a free man by going North, why 
not let the South act on the opposite principle that a negro, 
coming into the South, becomes a slave ? 

In the conflict of opinions, the President determined for 
himself. He felt bound by the law of 1819, authorizing him 
to provide for the safe keeping, support, and removal of such 
negroes from the United States, and to appoint an agent to 
receive them in Africa and aid them ; President Monroe had 
so interpreted the law, and so it had been interpreted by 
President Buchanan himself two years earlier. Therefore, 
Congress, at the President's request, passed an act appro- 
priating two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars for 
the purpose, and after special agreement between the Presi- 
dent and the American Colonization Society the negroes were 
carried away to Africa under the auspices of the latter 
organization. There they were to be assisted for one year, 
with the privileges of citizenship, means of education, and 
chances to make their own living freely given them under 
Christian influences. Probably out of the fifteen hundred 
who were landed at Key West few over one thousand reached 
Liberia; three hundred died in Florida and some on the 
voyage to Africa.^ 

In striking contrast to this prominence of the foreign 
slave trade in the mind of the North, was the actual dearth 
of news as to the domestic slave trade. The abolitionists 
continued to pass their usual resolutions against the inter- 
state traffic, but the news items on the subject in their own 

1 It was rumored that many of the three hundred who " died " at Key 
West were in reality stolen ; but this could not be proved. It was the 
custom of the British to set the captured Africans and crew at liberty, to 
destroy the vessel, and to send the liberated Africans to the British West 
Indies to serve as apprentices. 

Q 



82 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

papers, and indeed in the press in general, scarcely nientioned 
details, and in the public presentation of slavery in the 
North the interstate trade held a relatively unimportant 
position. Fugitive and obscure notices in the St. Louis 
papers mentioned the trade at that point, where ''scarcely 
a day passes but gangs of these unfortunate creatures are 
seen, trailing in couples, with drivers in the front and in the 
rear, down the principal streets leading to the river. Mis- 
souri is undoubtedly being depleted of her young and vig- 
orous slaves." A certain trader was authority for the state- 
ment that from Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, 
one hundred thousand slaves were taken annually into the 
Southwest. If the trade was thus vigorous, while the notices 
of it in the papers were meager, the inference is that it was 
carried on under fairly favorable conditions.^ 

The problem of the free negro was ever present. Scarcely 
above the slaves in social position, and in many respects 
more feared and despised, this neglected class, like their 
enslaved brothers, suffered the vengeance of the Southern 
reaction roused by John Brown. They were a lazy, worth- 
less, vagabond set, always ready to be tampered with by 
the Northern John Browns, and always themselves ready to 
tamper with slaves and aid in their escape. At the begin- 
ning of the year, while the story of the white exiles from 
Berea, Kentucky, was filling the public mind, forty blacks 
arrived in Cincinnati from Arkansas with an even more 
piteous appeal ; on pain of being made slaves if they remained 
in their homes after January 1, 1860, they had been driven 
away as exiles. Where could they go? 

Laws against free negroes were of long standing, and w^hile 
at every reenactment they were made more severe, the 
severity now seemed redoubled. The Missouri legislature, 

1 For the statements in this paragraph the authorities are the Northern 
newspapers, together -nnth the Uirge collection of local Southern papers in 
the Library of Congress at Washington. 



THE POPULAR DISCUSSION OF SLAVERY 83 

copying the Arkansas act, passed a bill declaring first, that 
there could be no emancipation of slaves in that state unless 
the master gave bond of two thousand dollars that the freed 
negroes would leave the state ; second, that every free negro 
or mulatto over eighteen should leave the state before the 
next September or be sold at public auction as a slave for 
life; third, that all free negroes under eighteen should be 
bound as apprentices till they were twenty-one, when they 
must leave ; and fourth, that every free negro coming into 
the state after the next September should be reduced to 
slavery if he remained over twenty-four hours. On constitu- 
tional grounds the Governor of the state vetoed this bill, thus 
establishing a precedent that was in a short time followed 
by the Governor of Florida in vetoing a similar bill passed 
by the legislature of that state. Maryland enacted the same 
measiu-e and submitted it to the people for their approval 
or disapproval at the coming presidential election ; the same 
was attempted and passed through a single house of the Legis- 
lature in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi, but failed 
of final enactment in each case. Not only humanity and 
progressive civilization stood in the way, but also the plain 
provisions of the Constitution of the United States, which 
guaranteed a speedy and pubhc trial, by an impartial jury, 
for all crimes except in cases of impeachment, and declared 
that no person should be deprived of life, liberty, or property 
without due process of law; the same provisions were in 
the majority of the state constitutions. Yet the fact stands 
out that in spite of these great legal principles six Southern 
states attempted arbitrarily to make slaves of free men. 
Certainly the excitement and the provocation must have 
been great. 

South Carolina accomplished the same end by different 
means. After August every free black in the state was 
required to have a guardian or trustee, who would enter 
him in the tax assessments as his property ; a copper badge, 



84 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

with a number attached, was to be the outward sign of the 
new relationship. Without a trustee, a negro would be sold ; 
without a badge, he would be fined and imprisoned. If the 
trustee proved avaricious and sold his charge or disposed of 
the property, there could be no redress. With this fate 
impending, nearly a thousand negroes left Charleston alone 
for New York and Philadelphia within three months' time. 
In Philadelphia one copper plate which read, ''Charleston 
1860 — servant 1243," aroused much interest. In several 
states free negroes were allowed voluntarily to enslave 
themselves, and, strange as it may seem, the papers chroni- 
cled instances of servitude under these laws by the victim's 
own free will. 

Older laws on the subject of the free negroes of the South 
were brought to the attention of the Northern public, such 
as those in Virginia requiring sale at public auction for non- 
payment of taxes and for conviction for crime, or those in 
Texas requiring the same for all free negroes entering the 
state. This last provision against the incoming of free 
negroes from one state into another was general in the 
South. 

At least three Northern states, Indiana, Illinois, and Ore- 
gon, by law prohibited free negroes from entering their 
borders, and all other Northern states were at least chary 
in their welcome. Here was inconsistency. Negroes were 
loved, but at a distance. By almost universal custom 
militia service and jury duty were forbidden them; they 
were not wanted in the passenger coaches, sleeping cars, 
steamboats, and street cars, and when they ventured across 
these portals they were usually ejected ; there were separate 
schools for their children, and when by law they were allowed 
to send their children to school along with the white children, 
the latter most strenuously objected to sitting in the school- 
room near them. Outside of Connecticut, they could vote 
under certain restrictions in all New England and in New 



THE POPULAR DISCUSSION OF SLAVERY 85 

York, but in Connecticut and several Western states the 
ballot was refused them. 

For the free negroes, then, of whom there were over a 
half million in the nation, what should be done? The old 
sentiment in favor of colonization seemed to regain some of 
its former strength, without accomplishing anything more 
definite, however, than had been accomplished in the past. 
Pointing to the pitiful wretches, the North reviled the South, 
the South reviled the North. Neither side practised as 
much justice as it saw fit to require of the other. 

The discord in the Christian churches of the land over the 
prevailing question may well be imagined. Should these 
organizations denounce slavery and exclude slaveholders 
from their fellowship, or should they not ? The Methodist 
Episcopal Church in particular, with its closely knit organi- 
zation and large annual gatherings North and South, was 
brought face to face with the inevitable question. Swept 
along by a tide of prosperity during the first part of the cen- 
tury, it had closed its eyes to its antislavery beginnings and 
remained peaceful, with slaveholders and nonslaveholders 
in its ranks, until the abolition upheavals of 1830-1840; 
then several annual conferences, after hot debate, disciplined 
members for militant antislavery ; in 1840 an antislavery 
wing, the Wesleyan Methodist Church, spUt off from the 
mother church, and finally in 1844, in the year of the exciting 
presidential election just preceding the Mexican war, came 
the memorable schism which resulted in the Methodist 
Church North and the Methodist Church South, two separate 
organizations. In this first great rupture the dividing issue 
was not an antislavery test for membership, but the broader 
question as to whether or not a presiding Bishop should be 
allowed to hold slaves. While the proslavery wing in its 
narrow field at once enjoyed peace and prosperity, the same 
was not true of its Northern sister, for the proslavery 
''Border Conferences" in Delaware, Maryland, the District 



86 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

of Columbia, Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, and Arkansas still 
remained in the old church, and peace was short-lived. In 
the exciting presidential year of 1856 the church a second 
time faced the issue, the North in general opposing slavery 
and the Border states favoring it. Nothing was decided, 
and again, a third time, in the presidential year of 1860, the 
denomination came together in general conference to discuss 
the ever-recurring question. The picture may easily be 
drawn. Individual churches, in the preaching services, 
in the Sunday Schools, and in the prayer meetings debated 
pro and con the instructions to be given to the quarterly 
conferences, these in turn were forced to frame instructions 
to the annual conferences, and these to the general confer- 
ence ; the religious weeklies of the denomination took sides ; 
and from one end to the other the largest church of the North 
sat in judgment on the most fundamental social institution 
of sister states. That the picture is not overdrawn is evi- 
denced by the many references in the daily press. 

For four weeks the great conference at Buffalo wTestled 
with the petitions of the contending factions and at last 
adopted a rule in the General Rules of the Societies to 
forbid "the buying, selling, or holding of men, women, and 
children with an intention to enslave them"; heretofore 
only the ''buying and selling" had been prohibited; now 
the word "holding" was added. ^ Similarly a chapter in 
the Book of Discipline was amended to read: "Question. 
What shall be done for the extirpation of the evil of slavery ? 
Answer. We declare that we are as much as ever convinced 
of the great evil of slavery. We believe that the buying, 
selling, or holding of human beings as chattels is inconsistent 

* The committee received memorials against a change from 32 annual 
conferences, signed by 3999 memorialists and 39 quarterly conferences ; 
for a change and extirpation of slavery there were petitions from 33 
annual conferences, signed by 45,857 people and 49 quarterly conferences. 
There was some bitter debate in the quarterly and annual conferences. 



THE POPULAR DISCUSSION OF SLAVERY 87 

with the Golden Rule, and with that rule in our discipline 
which requires all that desire to continue among us 'to do 
no harm and to avoid evil of every kind.' We, therefore, 
affectionately admonish all our preachers and people to keep 
themselves from this great evil, and to seek its extirpation 
by all lawful Christian means." The new rule was to be 
only advisory, not statutory. Thus, although antislavery 
won the day, the triumph was far from complete, for the 
slaveholders were not yet positively prohibited from mem- 
bership in the church. 

Factions of the Baptist Church and of the Presbyterian 
Church were also at variance one with another on the never- 
dying question, although the issue was not now so acute 
in these denominations as among the Methodists. The 
Protestant Episcopal Church seemed strongly proslavery, 
as was shown by the action of a large diocesan convention 
of the Church in New York City, in refusing to condemn 
even the slave trade. Some smaller denominations were 
already positively excluding slaveholders from membership, 
notably the United Presbyterians with fifty thousand mem- 
bers, the Freewill Baptists with sixty thousand members, 
the United Brethren in Christ w^ith eighty thousand, and the 
Wesleyan Methodists with twenty thousand; hundreds of 
individual Congregational churches also were on the same 
side. 

The large interdenominational benevolent organizations 
fell victims of the same spirit of strife. Neither the American 
Sunday School Union nor the American Tract Society nor 
the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions 
could be deemed truly Christian brotherhoods if acceptance 
or tolerance of slavery was unchristian. In the face of most 
bitter comment and possibly to the detriment of its work 
in foreign lands, the last-named body refused to commit 
itself on slavery one way or the other, and continued to re- 
tain slaveholders in membership until its friends and sup- 



88 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

porters began visibly to fall off ; not till late in the year 1860 
did it bring itself to denounce the slave trade. Such a lead- 
ing individual organization as Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, 
rejected the determined stand of its distinguished pastor, 
Henry Ward Beecher, and in a most bitter and excit- 
ing annual meeting, thrice adjourned, departed from its 
long custom by withholding a part of its missionary collec- 
tions from the same society. The American Tract Society 
of New York, the proslavery branch of the original society,^ 
suffered almost perpetual persecution and ridicule, at the 
hands of Horace Greeley in the New York Tribune and of 
Henry Ward Beecher in the New York Independent, for its 
mutilation of tracts in favor of the South. One example 
follows. Gurney's Habitual Exercise of Love toward God 
contains these words: ''If this love had always pre- 
vailed, where would have been the sword of the crusader ? 
where the odious system which permits to man property in 
his fellow-man, and converts rational beings into marketable 
chattels?" These last two clauses were printed by the 
society to read: "Where the tortures of the Inquisition? 
where every system of oppression and wrong by which he 
who has the power revels in luxury at the expense of his 
fellow-man?" 

Among the important religious papers the Neio York 
Observer supported slavery and the South and roundly de- 
nounced antislavery. Nothing of the great moral ferment 
and revolution, nothing on human rights and liberty, touched 
its pages ; not even an outline description of American re- 
ligious life could be culled from its pages. A fair inference 
from it would be that it represented the Christian world, 
not of the United States of America, but of far-distant mis- 
sionary lands. The paper was dead so far as the morals 
of America were concerned. This explains the contemptuous 
reference to the Observer by William Lloyd Garrison in his 

^ The American Tract Society of Boston was the antislavery branch. 



THE POPULAR DISCUSSION OF SLAVERY 89 

speech in Boston on the night of the execution of John Brown ; 
it explains the perfect volleys of hot satire and jibe poked 
at it by the New York Independent and the New York Evan- 
gelist. The former laid eight questions before its thousands 
of readers for every answer to which, by the Observer, by a 
simple ''yes" or ''no," it would contribute twenty-five 
dollars to missions. The questions themselves reveal the 
passionate nature of the controversy. "First, Is it wrong 
to sell human beings, guiltless of crime? Second, Is it 
wrong to hold human beings as property, subject to be 
bought and sold ? Third, Is it wrong to separate by force 
or law husbands and wives, parents and children, w^hen 
neither crime nor vice, nor insanity in either of the parties, 
calls for such separation? Fourth, Have slaves an equal 
right with other persons to marry according to their own 
choice, and should such marriage, when contracted, be 
held sacred and inviolable? Fifth, Has the slave woman 
an absolute right to her chastity, and is the master who 
violates that chastity guilty of a crime? Sixth, Have 
slaves a right to read the Bible, and is it a crime to forbid 
them to be taught to read? Seventh, Is the system of 
slavery as it exists in the Southern states a blessing to 
the country, which should be cherished and perpetuated by 
national legislation ? Eighth, Is the system of slavery, as 
by law established in the Southern states, morally right?" 
The answers never came, and the New York Observer was 
brought into contempt.^ 

Pausing now at this stage of our narrative to survey the 
popular conditions that succeeded John Brown's raid before 
passing on to the politics of the year, it will be agreed that 



1 The editor of the Observer, be it said, lost his position later in the year, 
and he wrote a long pamphlet in defense of the position on slavery which 
the paper had taken under his guidance. It cannot be said, however, that 
the tone of the paper at the end of the year differed from the tone exhibited 
during the first of the year under the deposed editor. 



90 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

the Union of the States was truly "a. house divided against 
itself" and that an "irrepressible conflict" was agitating e very- 
part. The one side with an overflow of zeal that too readily 
responded to the negro's Macedonian cry, ''Come over into 
Macedonia and help us," sent John Browns to prey upon 
slavery and hailed them as heroes for their acts ; denounced 
slavery in every form and welcomed attacks upon it ; and 
held up to scorn the moral character of the slaveholders. 
By formal state law Northerners nulhfied the Congressional 
Fugitive Slave Law, the nation's pledge of fair dealing with 
the South, and with alacrity aided the fugitives to flee from 
their masters ; servants of Southern travelers in the North 
were not safe. Too frequently Northerners obstinately 
refused to return to the South its criminal fugitives from 
justice. In the national Congress, in state legislatures, 
in courts, in public meetings, in religious services, in the 
general religious and charitable societies, in the secular and 
in the religious press, in books and in countless ways the one 
section persisted in dishonoring that which the other section 
held in honor. The South, with the natural instinct of self- 
defense, repelled the John Browns with great fury, burned 
the Northern newspapers in their midst, and infringed con- 
stantly on the freedom of the press and of speech. Through 
the courts the Southerners were threatening to force their 
system on the free Northern states and to bring to naught 
the laws against the foreign slave trade; they persistently 
kidnapped the free negroes of the North when the oppor- 
tunity offered, and they seemed to forget all modern civiliza- 
tion in the treatment they extended to their own free negroes. 
This inevitable march of daily events was fast reaching 
a crisis that would settle the fate of the Union or at least 
greatly affect its future; every day the end drew nearer. 
It was a situation that political conventions and platforms 
might recognize but could not control. The people were 
in command, and they themselves were being hurried 



THE POPULAR DISCUSSION OF SLAVERY 91 

along by unseen and irresistible forces, now by this seemingly 
small event and now by that. Every act, every expression of 
sentiment, every edition of a daily paper, though a small 
thing, was a contribution to the swelling tide of the "irre- 
pressible conflict" in the ''house divided against itself." 
Through knowledge of this kind it is now proposed to study 
the pohtical crisis. 



CHAPTER V 

THE DEMOCEATIC CONVENTIONS 

ALTHOUGH it has been found necessary to separate 
into more or less distinct parts the popular presentation 
of slavery and its discussion by politicians, in reality the two 
were inseparably connected. Politicians, bent on framing 
their views for the coming campaign, observed the same daily 
events that the people observed, discussed the same things 
that the people discussed, and like them, were swept blindly 
along, helpless victims of the ''irrepressible conflict." Their 
utterances, no matter how abstractly expressed, reflected 
the tense excitement that surrounded them. 

As a result of the policy of territorial expansion, which 
had added to the country's domain millions of acres at the 
close of the Mexican War and for the most part had guided 
the councils of the nation since that time, problems of terri- 
torial government were now foremost, and a definite decision 
was called for as to the extension of slavery to the new do- 
mains. On this point the Democratic party was split into 
two hostile factions, between the followers of Stephen Arnold 
Douglas, United States Senator from Illinois, who favored 
popular sovereignty on the subject of slavery in the terri- 
tories, and those who believed in the principles of John C. 
Calhoun, William L. Yancey, and Chief Justice Taney, 
enunciated in the Dred Scott decision, that slavery spread 
over the territories with the Constitution. Historically each 
position was good Democratic doctrine, for during the pre- 
ceding twelve or thirteen years now the one view and now 

92 



THE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTIONS 93 

the other was in the ascendency. As early as 1847, imme- 
diately after the attempt in Congress to pass the Wilmot 
Proviso in favor of Congressional restriction of slavery in 
the territory to be acquired from Mexico, factions appeared ; 
Northern Democrats almost to a man, and a few Southerners 
expressed themselves as preferring Wilmot's principle of 
Congressional restriction, the majority of Southerners came 
out in opposition to any form of national restriction and in 
favor of territorial control, while a minority of Southerners 
in South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, under the political 
leadership of William L. Yancey of Alabama, stood definitely 
for the principle that the constitution of its own force carried 
slavery into the territories. The great Southwest in Missis- 
sippi, Louisiana, and Texas, full of the sturdy reliance of the 
frontier, opposed Yancey and favored territorial control or 
popular sovereignty. Differences seemed irreconcilable. 
In the crisis, Lewis Cass of Michigan, a prominent candidate 
for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency, deserted 
his freedom-loving associates of the North and in his so-called 
Nicholson letter, with a conscious purpose to please as many 
factions as possible, brought forward a new statement of 
popular sovereignty as a compromise platform upon which 
all factions might unite. On this platform he won the 
nomination. He declared that the principle of national 
interference in the territories should be limited to the crea- 
tion of proper territorial governments, ''leaving in the mean- 
time, to the people inhabiting them, to regulate their internal 
concerns in their own way. They are just as able to do so 
as the people of the states." ^ 

After Cass's stinging defeat at the polls, the Yanceyites, 
who had bolted the national convention that had nominated 

* This letter was written December 24, 1847, to A. O. P. Nicholson. 
Douglas pointed out that before the letter was published, it was handed 
about for approval to many prominent politicians both in the North 
and in the South. Others had expressed the idea many times before Cass. 



94 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

him as the compromise candidate and had adopted the 
straddle platform, became more irreconcilable than ever; 
two years later, in 1850, they opposed the celebrated com- 
promise measures of that year, in which it was sought to 
sink all differences, and in the presidential campaign of 1852, 
when Wliigs as well as Democrats proclaimed the finahty 
of these compromises, they still stood apart and ran a ticket 
of their own. They were irreconcilable, unconquered and 
unconquerable ; the schism seemed irremediable. 

Another reconciliation, however, was attempted, this time 
under the guiding hand of Douglas in 1854. In his Kansas- 
Nebraska act, by repealing the Missouri restriction of 1820 
Douglas now restored to the South its lost chance to secure a 
foothold for slavery in the Northwest ; he wrote into the law 
of the land that it was the ''true intent and meaning of this 
act, not to legislate slavery into any state or territory, nor 
to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof per- 
fectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in 
their own way" ; and in order to confirm the still wavering 
Southerners, he added to the preceding the clause, ''subject 
only to the Constitution of the United States." This last 
phrase, the great statesman declared, was intended to bring 
the whole question before the Supreme Court of the United 
States, where, if the Southerners were receding too much 
from the growing doctrines of Yancey, they might find ample 
redress. The declaration was accepted and never was a law 
more popular in the South than this one of Douglas. Rec- 
onciliation of factions seemed complete. Throughout the 
country. North and South, the Southerners joined the Illi- 
noisian and his adherents in praising popular sovereignty. 
The Supreme Court decision, be it remembered, had not yet 
been announced ; it was yet to come, and there was nothing 
to check the flow of Southern oratory in favor of the new 
statesmanship. 

Candidate Buchanan, in his letter of acceptance of the 



THE DEMOCRATIC CONVl^NTIONS 95 

Presidential nomination in 1856, used the following lan- 
guage : ''This legislation (the Kanfeus-Nebraska act) is 
founded upon principles as ancient as free government itself, 
and in accordance with them has simply declared that the 
people of a territory, like those of a state, shall decide for 
themselves whether slavery shall or shall not exist within 
their limits, . . . This principle will surely not be contro- 
verted by any individual of the party professing devotion 
to popular government." Cobb of Georgia, later President 
Buchanan's secretary of the treasury, in a campaign speech 
declared that the will of the majority of the people of Kansas 
should decide the question; he would not ''plant slavery 
upon the soil of any portion of God's earth against the will 
of the people." The Democratic vice-presidential candidate, 
Breckenridge, praised the act because "it acknowledged 
the right of the people of a territory to settle the question 
for themselves." Douglas himself in 1860, referring back 
to a political speech which he had made in 1852 in Brecken- 
ridge's home in Lexington, Kentucky, described the Vice 
President's position at that early date in the following pic- 
turesque language: "I stood in the rain addressing those 
people for three mortal hours, and drenched in rain, during 
which I described the principles of nonintervention and pop- 
ularity as I have explained them to you to-night. Breck- 
enridge stood by my side and patted me on the back. At 
any important part of the speech he called for three cheers 
for the 'little giant.'" Going on, he referred in the follow- 
ing words to a great meeting at Tippecanoe, Indiana, in 
1856: "We made speeches from the same stand. He 
(Breckenridge), having priority of me as a candidate, spoke 
first, and when he came to expound this doctrine of non- 
intervention, this right of the people to govern themselves 
in the territories, I was so delighted with his arguments 
that I got right up behind him and told him to 'go it.' . . . 
(Then when Douglas himself was speaking) On all the telling 



96 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

points, when I was giving the abohtionists particular 'Jessie' 
and bringing the Democrats up to the point, Breckenridge 
would stand at my back, clap me on the back, and indorse 
my sentiments. I assure you that at that time I did not 
doubt that Breckenridge was sound on the dogma." ^ 

This reconciliation, now apparently so complete under 
the happy inspiration of Douglas, was destined to be but 
short-lived. Within a few months came Chief Justice 
Taney's revolutionary declarations in the Dred Scott deci- 
sion to the effect that slaves were property, were protected 
by all the constitutional guarantees of property, and went 
where the Constitution went ; neither a territorial legislature 
nor Congress nor any power could exclude slavery from a 
territory because they could not exclude the Constitution 
therefrom. Straightway the slave states were in an uproar. 
They had given Douglas a trial. Their hearts had been set 
on California and later on Kansas, and in a contest with 
the North under popular sovereignty, they had lost them 
both ; they loved their party, but were now forced to behold 
the spectacle of a new and aggressive antislavery organiza- 
tion growing up in the North under the very aegis of practical 
Democratic administration. Disaster after disaster seemed 
to be piling up, and the belief was beginning to spread that 
it was of no use for the South to continue further the struggle 
with the North for the territories under the conditions laid 
down by Douglas, for in any contest between slavery and 
freedom the free states were bound to win. It was a bitter 
confession. Then, like magic, under the spell of the Chief 
Justice, the pendulum swung back, the slaveholders re- 
nounced compromise and turned to the extreme Southern 
doctrine, now given dignity and importance by persons in 
high station. Instead of settlement of the slavery question 
by the inhabitants themselves of the territories. Southerners 

1 For a Bell-Everett treatment of the popular sovereignty record of the 
Breekenridgeites, see pp. 332-335. 



THE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTIONS 97 

would now have it settled beforehand and in favor of the 
South before even the first pioneers set out. They always 
bowed to the decisions of the Supreme Court, they piously 
but erroneously contended, but they believed in bowing a 
little lower when these decisions were in their favor. The 
Dred Scott decision was but the judicial determination of 
the long dispute, promised by Douglas in the words, "sub- 
ject only to the Constitution of the United States," and as 
^ such he was now called upon to accept it. 

Douglas determined otherwise. The Dred Scott decision 
from his point of view was in no sense a settlement of the point 
at issue ; that case fixed only the principle that a negro, as 
a noncitizen, could not bring suit in the courts of the United 
States. For the Chief Justice to deUver learned and weighty 
utterances in favor of the extreme Southern political prin- 
ciples of Calhoun and Yancey was only to dabble in politics 
— not judicial determination at all. Douglas showed that 
no territorial legislature was mentioned in the record of the 
case and that no territorial enactment was before the court ; 
no one fact in the case even so much as alluded to a terri- 
torial legislature — the counsel in the case did not think 
that it was there and did not argue the point. 

Upholders of each side of the broken compromise now 
took hostile and irreconcilable positions; but the Illinois 
Senator went one step further and angered the South still 
more. Not only was the Dred Scott case obnoxious ; any 
decision that the court might render in the future would be 
powerless to weaken local control of slavery by territorial 
legislatures. ''It matters not what way the Supreme Court 
may hereafter decide as to the abstract question, whether 
slavery may or may not go into a territory under the Con- 
stitution, the people have the lawful means to introduce it 
or exclude it as they please, for the reason that slavery cannot 
exist a day or an hour anywhere unless it is supported by 
local police regulations. These pohce regulations can only 



98 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

be established by the local legislature ; and if the people are 
opposed to slavery, they will elect representatives to that 
body, who will, by unfriendly legislation, effectually prevent 
the introduction of it into. their midst. If, on the contrary, 
they are for it, their legislature will favor its extension. 
Hence, no matter what the decision of the Supreme Court 
may be on that abstract question, still the right of the people 
to make a slave territory or a free territory is perfect and 
complete under the Nebraska bill. I hope Mr. Lincoln 
deems my answer satisfactory on that point." The same 
had been held by Douglas and others for years, but has come 
down to the present generation under the name of the ''Free- 
port doctrine," because at that small town in Illinois in a 
joint meeting with his opponent, Abraham Lincoln, during 
the Senatorial campaign of 1858, Douglas was forced to 
assume the position prominently through the adroitness of 
his adversary.^ 

The Southerners, therefore, in turning away from Douglas 
and his ideas, were justifying themselves on a Supreme 
Court decision, when in his opinion there was no such deci- 
sion, one, moreover, which, even if it did exist, could not 
impair popular sovereignty. They were in error. They 
should come back to accepted Democratic dogma, regular 
through more than a score of years. Douglas conceded that 
they had the right to change their position from year to year 
if they saw fit ; let them not, however, deny that his prin- 
ciple was good Democratic doctrine and that they them- 
selves in 1856 had most ardently defended it. Yet the 
Southerners did make this denial ; they had praised Doug- 
las's position in 1856 — this they could not deny ; but they 
contended that they had never understood it as Douglas 
now said that he did. 

In a large sense both sides of the dispute were in the right, 
for popular sovereignty in 1856 and popular sovereignty 

1 For Douglas's tricky explanation of this in the South, see pp. 289-290. 



THE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTIONS 99 

in 186 , 'Viat is, before and after the Dred Scott decision, 
were : oie and the same thing. In the earher campaign 
the e'!'' r. of time was not considered important; people 
prais< ' ( 'v? principle indiscriminately, whether they believed 
that the right began as soon as the first settlers arrived in 
the territory or only after the grant of statehood. Conse- 
quently in 1860, after the time element had been emphasized 
by the Chief Justice through the declaration that popular 
control of slavery in the territories began only at the time 
when statehood began, Southerners might well say that they 
had had this distinction in mind in 1856, just as for six or 
eight years previously, but that they had not expressed it 
because they were assured that the point was unimportant. 
In the Southern mind their own principle was as time-hon- 
ored as that of Douglas.^ 

The last clash between the factions before the primaries, 
conventions, and discussions attending the national con- 
vention of 1860 to nominate a presidential standard-bearer 
was the struggle over the admission of Kansas into the Union 
under the Lecompton constitution. Now in a brutally 
concrete way the inevitable consequences of the two oppos- 
ing sets of principles were worked out before the public. 
All the power, patronage, and strategy of the administra- 
tion, all the manipulation that political shrewdness could 
invent, were brought to bear to induce Kansas, contrary 

1 Douglas insisted on a sharp distinction between popular sovereignty 
and squatter sovereignty; the latter name, though popularly applied to 
his principle, in reality was a thing by itself. When Americans first 
organized a government in Oregon without any sanction of law, Calhoun 
and others spoke of them as squatters, and of their government as squatter 
sovereignty. In the same way, settlers set up a provisional government 
in Nevada, Dakota, and in Colorado ; in the last-named place squatter 
sovereignty was in operation in 1860, in defiance of the laws of the United 
States and of the laws of the territory of Kansas. Quite a different thing 
was popular sovereignty ; this was the right of the people, after the terri- 
tory was organized by a law of Congress, to govern themselves tiU state- 
hood. . 



100 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

to her own desires, to adopt a constitution that would fasten 
slavery upon her, while all the fighting powers of the aroused 
''Little Giant" were brought to bear to allow Kansas to 
stand by her own choice. The contest was the more des- 
perate in view of the close approach of the next presidential 
election. A new slave state that for months had seemed 
impossible before the onrushes of Northern freedom-loving 
immigrants, could now be grasped at for the last time ; now, 
if ever, could the Southern partisans prove the popularity 
and vote-getting power of their position. On the other 
hand, Douglas saw or thought he saw, in the presence of the 
swelling tide of Northern antislavery, the utter political 
worthlessness of the Southern idea. To make himself 
president he must not offer new offense to the growing 
Northern sentiment ; he must not lay himself open to the 
charge of inconsistency and truckling to the South ; he must 
stick to his position and oppose the Lecompton constitution 
on the ground that it was a denial of popular sovereignty. 
Expediency was keeping him true to his record, but he seemed 
a hero. By his stand his followers in Congress, throughout 
the Northern states and in Kansas were so invigorated that 
the Lecompton project was defeated and Kansas lost to 
slavery. 

Proof was now irrefragable that Douglas was the enemy 
of the South, and that section turned from him forever. 
His mighty attempt in the Kansas-Nebraska act to pro- 
pitiate the Moloch of slavery, temporarily successful, in the 
end proved his undoing. Seward, Greeley, — no Black Re- 
publican could do more damage to Southern interests. 

Growing out of this battle royal over Kansas rose the per- 
sistent charge that while Douglas was hard pressed in his 
late Senatorial campaign in Ilhnois by the proslavery ad- 
ministration interests, he had gone too far into the camp of 
the enemy to gain supporters and had considered joining 
the RepubUcan party. Evidence piled up. In the parlor 



THE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTIONS 101 

of his Washington home the great Democrat frequently- 
had consulted with the Republicans, including Greeley, to 
whom he had said again and again, ''We could do this, we 
could do that." Letters and other testimony were produced 
showing that Greeley, Burlingame, and Wilson of Massachu- 
setts and other Eastern leaders had written to the Illinois Re- 
publicans requesting that they oppose no candidate to the 
reelection of Douglas to the Senate ; the latter was free soil 
enough for him, Greeley was reported to have said. An- 
other declared that Douglas had said to him that he ''had 
checked all his baggage and taken a through ticket into the 
Republican ranks." Lincoln's testimony was cited; al- 
though as the candidate opposed to Douglas, Lincoln was 
defeated he was still glad that his fellow Republicans of 
Illinois did not take the Eastern advice, but had preserved 
their own organization with their own candidate. To the 
political efficacy of these charges against Douglas the hostile 
Southern press of the time bears ample evidence.^ 

This long historical survey, with its platforms, laws, 
speeches, arguments and counter arguments, after the organ- 
ization of Congress, largely occupied the time of the leaders 
of the Democratic party in the nation at large and partic- 
ularly that of the Democratic leaders in the United States 
Senate. President Buchanan in his annual message at the 
opening of Congress was first in the lists. "I cordially con- 
gratulate you upon the final settlement by the Supreme Court 
of the United States of the question of slavery in the terri- 
tories, which had presented an aspect so truly formidable at 
the commencement of my administration. The right has 
been estabfished of every citizen to take his property of every 

1 For a strong speech on this subject, see the Congressional Globe, 
36 Cong., 1 Sess., Vol. IV, App., pp. 159-163 ; also the Springfield Repub- 
lican, March 16, 1860; the New York Evening Post, March 3, 1860; 
The American Conflict, by Horace Greeley, Hartford, 1864-1866, I, 301 ; 
Abraham Lincoln; Complete Works, ed. by Nieolay and Hay, New York, 
1894, I, 592. 



102 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

kind, including slaves, into the common territories belonging 
equally to all the states of the Confederacy, and to have it 
protected there under the Federal constitution. Neither 
Congress nor a territorial legislature nor any human power has 
any authority to annul or repair this vested right. The su- 
preme judicial tribunal of the country, which is a coordinate 
branch of the government, has sanctioned and affirmed these 
principles of constitutional law, so manifestly just in them- 
selves and so well calculated to promote peace and harmony 
among the states." In the same vein speech after speech 
was hurled at the popular sovereignty champion by the most 
eloquent Senators. Sometimes the argument followed the 
logic, fallacious and contrariwise, of the opposing sets of prin- 
ciples, and here Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was Douglas's 
foremost opponent. In famous resolutions which the Missis- 
sippi Senator introduced in the Senate early in February, he 
embodied the Calhoun- Yancey-Taney principles, and pro- 
voked debate and strife for over three months. An ad- 
vanced position was quickly developed ; not only did slavery 
go with the Constitution beyond the power of either terri- 
tory or Congress to eradicate it, but it was the bounden 
duty of Congress to enact a national slave code, which 
should do for slavery in the territories that which Douglas in 
his ^'Freeport doctrine" declared that the people could or 
could not do for themselves by territorial law. This was the 
extreme demand of the proslavery interests regarding terri- 
torial law.^ 

At other times the argument touched on personalities, with 
Benjamin of Louisiana playing the chief role. In and out of 
Congress Democrats and Republicans alike dissected Doug- 
las's character, and with surprising unanimity laid him bare 
as a self-seeking, inconsistent, double-faced man, who could 
be trusted by neither friend nor enemy. To go back no 

' For the speech of Davis, see the Congressional Globe, 3G Cong., 1 Sess., 
Vol. Ill, p. 1937. 



I 



THE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTIONS 103 

further than 1854 : for his own profit in that year he betrayed 
the antislavery Democrats of the North and by a fair prom- 
ise deceived the proslavery Southerners. This promise, 
when pohtical necessity demanded it, he threw overboard in 
his Freeport attack on the Dred Scott decision, and for a 
short while even pretended to draw near to his Repubhcan 
enemies; some charged that he was the author of the Le- 
compton constitution, in opposing which he made such a 
pubhc show of virtue. It was everything for Douglas and 
nothing for principle.^ ''We accuse him for this, to wit: 
that having bargained with us on a point on which we were 
at issue, that it should be considered a judicial point ; that 
he would act under the decision and consider it a doctrine 
of the party ; that having said that to us here in the Senate, 
he went home, and under the stress of a local election, his 
knees gave way ; his whole person trembled. His adversary 
stood upon principle and was beaten ; and, lo ! he is the 
candidate of a mighty party for the presidency of the United 
States. The Senator from Illinois faltered. He got the 
prize for which he faltered ; but, lo ! the prize of his ambi- 
tion slips from his grasp because of the faltering, which he 
paid as the price for the ignoble prize, ignoble under the cir- 
cumstances under which he obtained it." ^ 

Once again, however, in spite of everything, once again 
Douglas turned his face southward for propitiation and 
reconciliation. Surrounded by angry, ridiculing, sarcastic 
Southern senators he rose in his place in the Senate to speak 
on his bill to prevent recurrences of the John Brown raid. 
Under the Congressional power to repel invasions, to protect 

1 Later, in his convention platform, Douglas in turn renounced the 
Freeport principles by promising to abide by a future decision of the 
Supreme Court on the question. For his evasive explanation before a 
Southern audience of his Freeport doctrine, see pp. 289-290. 

2 This is from the greatest speech against Douglas by Senator Benjamin 
of Louisiana; see the Congressional Globe, 36 Cong., 1 Sess., Vol. Ill, 
p. 2233. 



104 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

each state from domestic violence, and to guarantee them a 
RepubUcan form of government he pleaded for a law to 
enable the President to prevent such invasions by the use of 
the troops of the United States and to punish the conspirators 
in the courts of the United States. "Mr. President, the 
method of preserving peace is plain. The system of sectional 
warfare must cease. The constitution has given the power 
and all we ask of Congress is to give the means, and we, by 
indictments and convictions in the Federal courts of our sev- 
eral states, will make such examples of the leaders of these 
conspiracies as will strike terror into the hearts of others, 
and there will be an end of this crusade." He would ''open 
the prison doors to allow conspirators against the peace of the 
Republic and the domestic tranquillity of our states to select 
their cells wherein to drag out a miserable life as punish- 
ment for their crimes against the peace of society." ^ 

Southerners laughed. They knew the man and would 
have none of him. The bill was never heard of again. Re- 
caUing the sedition act of 1798, many believed that the 
proposed measure of Douglas, if enacted into law, would 
inaugurate a reign of political persecution like that of the 
days of the old Federalists. Hearing of Douglas's speech, 
his former anti-Lecompton associate, Hickman of Pennsyl- 
vania, exclaimed: "Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dirt 
shalt thou eat all the days of thy life !" 

Never was a public man subjected to such merciless criti- 
cism from within the ranks of his own party, and never did a 
public man under fire make a more valiant defense. Day 
after day the Senate Chamber at Washington was virtually 
the political arena of the Democratic Party, wherein one 
candidate openly defended his claims upon the nomination 
of his party for the presidency of the United States, and 
eight or ten rivals, mostly Southerners, sought to badger and 
destroy him. Contemporary judgment inclined to the view 

^ The Congressional Globe, 3G Cong., 1 Sess., Vol. I, p. 552. 



THE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTIONS 105 

that Douglas was the superior of them all in the power of 
argument. Yet he availed nothing. 

The die was cast. No longer would the South parley with 
a Northern man with Southern principles, no longer com- 
promise or fall short of insistence upon their extreme position. 
To compromise was a losing policy. In 1848, while Yancey 
and others urged the extreme claims, the majority accepted 
a Northern straddle and were defeated; the compromise 
measures of 1850, the issue of the election of 1852, profited 
nothing, for California was lost and the fugitive slave law 
accomplished little ; the bargain with the Northern leader in 
1854 on popular sovereignty and the Supreme Court proved 
a delusion and a snare, for Kansas was not won and the 
Dred Scott decision was flaunted, the ''Freeport doctrine" 
enunciated, and the Lecompton constitution defeated. "No 
more straddles, no more compromises, and down with Doug- 
las" was the new battle cry. The only way to retrieve their 
failing fortunes before the successes of Black Republicanism 
was to make a final stand on their extreme position and to 
maintain themselves there at any cost. This, indeed, was 
the only thing possible ; all other policies had failed. 

Northern Democrats stood aghast at the inevitableness 
of the situation. But if they could not please the South- 
erners, who could ? Could Black Republicans ? The result 
of the dilemma was apparent to all. Their hero, though, 
now perhaps in their eyes more popular than ever because of 
his firm stand against the persecutions of the proslavery 
administration party, could not be deserted. "The sacred 
right of self-government," always Douglas's leading argument 
to independent and self-reliant Americans, and all the other 
favorite arguments, shone with undiminished splendor. 
Why should an American citizen lose his ability to govern 
himself when he crossed an imaginary boundary line between 
a state and a territory ? Why should not the people who are 
to suffer the effects of legislation, themselves legislate ? For 



106 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

the South to estrange their Northern friends was politically 
unwise; if the slaveholders were really bent on a quarrel, 
why not direct it against their inveterate antislavery ene- 
mies for real substantial grievances, such as John Brown's 
raid, the personal liberty laws, and the popular judgment in 
the North against slavery ? 

Stirred by this inevitable and irrepressible conflict, the 
Democratic party assembled itself in national convention. 

The story of the convention may be briefly told. In the 
convention hall at Charleston, South Carolina, which held 
three thousand people, on the twenty-first of April six hun- 
dred and six delegates came together with the power of cast- 
ing three hundred and three votes ; seats were provided for 
the national committee, for distinguished guests, and for over 
two thousand spectators. Caleb Cushing of Massachusetts, a 
strong proslavery man, was permanent chairman. After a 
week's earnest debate, which in a remarkable manner arrested 
the attention of the whole nation already greatly roused by 
the undying popular discussion of slavery, the committee on 
resolutions reported three resolutions : one, the majority 
report, adopted in committee by a vote of seventeen to six- 
teen (California and Oregon voting with the South against 
the North), provided for a reassertion of the Cincinnati 
platform of 1856 with the addition of the principles of the 
Dred Scott decision ; another, the minority report, provided 
for reassertion of the Cincinnati platform, with the addition 
of a promise to abide by any future decision of the Supreme 
Court as regarded slavery in the territories ; and a third, 
signed only by Benjamin F. Butler of Massachusetts, re- 
asserted the Cincinnati platform, without any additions or 
alterations. Earnest debate in open convention followed, 
and by a full vote of one hundred and sixty-five to one hun- 
dred and thirty-eight the majority report was rejected and 
that of the minority substituted in its place. Popular 
sovereignty was triumphant ; again it was the true party 



THE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTIONS 107 

doctrine, but the victory was so hollow that Douglas never 
reaped any fruits from it. 

As soon as the vote was announced the Alabama dele- 
gation arose and left the hall, followed by ten of the Louisiana 
delegates, all those from Mississippi, Texas, and Florida, 
and a majority of those from South Carolina, Georgia, and 
Arkansas; and the departure of each delegation was pre- 
ceded by a solemn speech of justification and farewell. This 
secession accomplished, the remaining delegates proceeded 
to a fruitless balloting for President through fifty-seven 
wearisome ballots, in which Douglas was always far in the 
lead of the other candidates, including, among others, James 
Guthrie of Kentucky, R, M. T. Hunter of Virginia, and 
Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, without ever attaining the 
requisite number of votes to give him the nomination. Then 
the convention passed a resolution requesting the seceding 
states to fill up their vacant delegations, and adjourned for 
six weeks, to meet again in Baltimore on the eighteenth of 
June. The Charleston sessions had lasted two weeks. 

In the meantime the seceders, increased by the addition 
of a few delegates from the border states of Missouri, Ken- 
tucky, Delaware, and North Carolina, immediately after 
their withdrawal gathered themselves into convention in the 
same city of Charleston, listened to a few speeches, placed 
themselves on record as opposed to the adoption of a new 
party name and to the issuing of a separate platform of 
principles, and then adjourned to meet in Richmond, Vir- 
ginia, the eleventh of June, one week before the reassembling 
of the regular convention in Baltimore. 

In all its history the Democratic party had never been so 
torn by debate as in these weeks of waiting in May and June ; 
on the one hand, the devoted Douglasites of the North 
boiled with rage and anger at the insurrectionists and bolters 
of the South, and passionately committed themselves against 
admitting them back again into the second convention ; 



108 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

while, on the other hand, the radicals of the South, with 
their every step fiercely assailed by a few still devoted Doug- 
las followers, firmly approved of the rebels, reappointed 
them and sent them as delegates, with few exceptions, both 
to Baltimore and to Richmond. Several contesting delega- 
tions were also appointed. The country at large, awestruck 
by the disruption of the great historic party, echoed the 
ominous words of Georgia's leading statesman, Howell Cobb : 
''It cannot be disguised that both the safety of the South 
and the integrity of the Union are seriously threatened. It is 
my honest conviction that the issue depends upon the action 
of the Southern people at this important juncture." "The 
overthrow of the national Democratic party would be a 
gigantic stride toward dissolution," wrote Ex-Governor 
Herschel V. Johnson of Georgia. 

Seldom has the attention of the country been so fixed on a 
national convention as on that at Baltimore. The expected 
happened, an irreconcilable quarrel over the contesting 
Southern delegations. On this important question, by the 
very act of secession of the Southerners themselves at Charles- 
ton, the entire decision lay with the Douglas men. South 
CaroUna and Florida sent their delegates now only to Rich- 
mond; from Mississippi and Texas the original seceding 
delegates, commissioned to both Richmond and Baltimore, 
after a sharp contest were accepted at Baltimore but refused 
the prof erred seats; the original delegates from Arkansas 
and Georgia, sent to both adjourned conventions, were 
accepted at Baltimore and took their seats ; from Alabama 
and Louisiana alone, the bolters, commissioned to both June 
conventions, were rejected at Baltimore and their seats 
given to the rival Douglas delegates. Of the eight dissatis- 
fied states, two were represented at Baltimore and six were 
without representation, four of the latter by their own choice 
or that of their delegates and two by the action of the con- 
vention itself. But this rejection was crucial, for it precipi- 



THE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTIONS 109 

tated an immediate second secession, shared in by delegates 
from twenty states. The regulars then nominated Senator 
Douglas for President and Senator Fitzpatrick of Alabama 
for Vice President, while the seceders in an immediate con- 
vention in the same city, without waiting to go to Richmond, 
named Vice President Breckenridge of Kentucky for Presi- 
dent and Senator Lane of Oregon for Vice President. The 
Richmond convention, attended from day to day by the 
South Carolina delegates and daily adjourned while waiting 
for the results at Baltimore, ratified the nominations of 
Breckenridge and Lane.^ 

Discussion of the mooted questions arising out of these 
conventions continued down to the very day of election, if 
indeed it may be considered as terminating at that time. 
They were questions of party procedure and convention 
practice, questions primarily for the student of political 
science, and they are best appreciated when considered in 
this light. The whole convention system was at stake. 

At the outset the Southerners boldly challenged the prin- 
ciple of convention representation in their declaration that 
when the platform committee at Charleston, in which the 
states were equal because the committee was made up of 
one delegate from each state, had adopted the platform, 
this action should not have been rejected by the open con- 
vention, where the states were not equal. The action of the 
convention was controlled by states which were morally 
certain to cast no Democratic electoral votes ; states which 
were sure for the ticket should not be overborne by states 

^ A valuable history of these conventions from the Douglas point of 
view is contained in the address to the country by the national committee 
of the Douglas party; see the New York Herald, July 19, 1860. The 
Breckenridge side of the dispute may be found in the address to the coun- 
try of their national committee ; this may be found in the Boston Post, in 
the month of August, 1860, and also in Vol. XVII of the political pam- 
phlets in Yale University Library. Caucuses of 1860, by Murat Halsted, 
Columbus, 1860, is also valuable. 



no PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

which were sure to the enemy. Especially in a time of 
strained relations was this unfair. The reply was equally 
forcible. A convention should always control its committee, 
its servant. To assume at the very beginning of the cam- 
paign that certain states were to be lost was both impolitic 
and unwise as well as discouraging. Theoretically the exist- 
ing system had been devised to do the very thing that was 
now attacked. In the flourishing time of Democracy from 
Jefferson to Jackson, it finally appealed to people as unjust 
that only the Democratic members of Congress should par- 
ticipate in the right to nominate the presidential candidate ; 
if a certain district was not represented in Congress by a 
Democrat, the Democrats in that district secured no repre- 
sentation in their party's choice. Accordingly, at the sug- 
gestion of the New Hampshire legislature in 1832, the Demo- 
cratic party adopted the plan of a convention, wherein the 
Democrats of all districts, whether in a majority or in a 
minority, might be represented.^ To prevent the control of 
the convention from going into the hands of delegates from 
states controlled by the opposition, it was decided that a 
two-thirds vote be required for nomination, and thereafter! 
this had been the practice in the national conventions.^ 

The manner of application of this two-thirds rule, whether 
two-thirds of the whole number of delegates should be re- 
quired or only two-thirds of the number voting, occasioned' 
further dispute. At Charleston, before proceeding to nomi- 
nate, it was decided that a two-thirds vote of the whole con- 
vention be required of the successful candidate, although in 
every Democratic convention in which the rule had been 
enforced after 1832 it had been ''two-thirds of the vote 



^ There were other reasons of weight for the decline of the Congres- 
sional caucus. 

2 In the convention of 1840 there was no ballot ; a committee of one 
from each state reported the nomination of Van Buren, and the report 
was unanimously accepted. 



THE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTIONS 111 

given" that had been stipulated.^ In the convention of 
1848, when on the fourth ballot Cass received two-thirds of 
the two hundred and fifty-four votes cast, although two 
hundred and ninety delegates were present, including the 
thirty-six from New York who would not vote, that candi- 
date was declared nominated. It had never been held that 
a full convention was necessary to nominate ; in fact, before 
1860, in only two conventions, those of 1848 and 1856, had 
every state been represented. ^ In extenuation of the change 
of party practice at Charleston it was pleaded that the step 
was a practical necessity if further secessions of the Southern 
delegates were to be prevented, and for this reason, the New 
York delegation, friendly to Douglas, voted for it.^ 

Through almost three score of ballots the nomination was 
thus withheld from Douglas, whose highest vote was one 
hundred and fifty-one and one-half, fifty and one-half votes 
less than the necessary two hundred and two. At Baltimore, 
with two hundred and twelve electoral votes present, though 
not all voting, after the same candidate had received only 
one hundred and eighty-one and one-half votes, twenty and 
one-half votes less than the two hundred and two, a unani- 
mous vote for him was carried without any objection, it was 
claimed, from any of the two hundred and twelve votes 
present. It may well be doubted if in the excitement and 
tumult of the moment the chairman correctly reported this 
viva voce vote ; probably more than twenty delegates, con- 

^ Jackson would not allow himself to be nominated by a convention in 
1832 ; only the vice presidential candidate was then named by the con- 
vention. 

2 For a valuable historical article on this subject, see the Daily Missouri 
Re-publican, St. Louis, August 9, 1860; in 1832 Missouri, in 1835 South 
Carolina, Alabama, and Illinois, in 1840 Connecticut, Delaware, Virginia, 
South Carolina, and Illinois, in 1844 South Carolina, and in 1852 South 
Carolina sent no delegates to the national convention of the party. 

^ It was threatened that if this vote was not passed, the whole South 
would secede ; such a vote seemed to the South a guarantee that Douglas 
would not and could not be named. 



112 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

trolling ten votes, shouted ''no" only to have their voices 
drowned out and not counted. It is to be recalled that the 
objectionable application of the two-thirds rule at Charleston 
was made after the departure of the secessionists, that is, by 
a convention controlled by Douglas, and the same body had 
ample power to change its own rule. This was now done, 
and Douglas was declared nominated by the following reso- 
lution : ''Resolved, unanimously, That Stephen A. Douglas 
of the state of Illinois, having now received two-thirds of all 
the votes given in this convention, is hereby declared nomi- 
nated, in accordance with the rules governing this body, and 
in accordance with the uniform customs and rules of former 
Democratic conventions, the regular nominee of the Demo- 
cratic party of the United States for the office of President of 
the United States." 

Breckenridge was declared nominated by only one hundred 
and five votes in a convention of fragments, in which, while 
some twenty states were represented, only five had full dele- 
gations.^ According to a strict construction of the Charles- 
ton rule, and in justice and equity to the delegates who must 
have been overborne by the Douglas chairman at Baltimore, 
both nominations were irregular; according to the Demo- 
cratic practice before 1860 both nominations were regular, 
if the Breckenridge gathering may be called a convention. 
The disputes on the point were very bitter. 

It was charged that the well-established unit rule, by which 
a state delegation might be forced to vote as a unit, was 
manipulated to the advantage of the North. The full 
Charleston convention adopted as a rule that "in any state 
which had not provided or directed, by its state convention, 
how its vote may be given, the convention will recognize the 
right of each delegate to cast his individual vote." This 

1 To put it at one hundred and five is to concede to Breckenridge every 
dispute as to the delegates and votes ; the Douglasites put Breckenridge' 3 
vote at a far lower figure. 



I 



THE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTIONS 113 

break from former custom released twenty-four and one-half 
Douglas votes, mostl^ m Pcrxasylvania, New Jer&ey, and 
Massachusetts, which by the egular operation of the unit 
rule would have been smothered by anti-Douglas state ma- 
jorities, while at the same time by the enforcement of the 
unit rule where the state conventions had directed it, fifty-one 
anti-Douglas votes were locked up, fifteen in New York, six 
in Ohio, five in Indiana, etc. The rule worked both ways, 
however, for after the secession at Charleston individual 
Southern delegates remaining behind could cast no vote. 
President Buchanan expressed the opinion that it was this 
want of uniformity in the mode of voting that led to the 
break up.^ If all the states had voted as units or if all the 
states had voted by individual delegates, in either case 
the majority platform would have been sustained and 'Hhe 
Democratic party would have been saved." 

To bolt a convention was a recognized means of party 
warfare. In 1848 the Yanceyites seceded from the Baltimore 
convention and took practically the same position in 1852 
when they nominated their own ticket of Troup and Quit- 
man; in 1856 the Alabama delegation was distinctly in- 
structed by the state convention to withdraw from the 
national convention unless suited as to the platform, and in 
1860 five Southern states, backed by many local conventions 
and widespread public opinion, issued the same instructions 
to their delegates to the national convention. The secession 
at Charleston, therefore, was not a sudden innovation. 

An interesting point hinged about the vice presidential 
nomination on the Douglas ticket. Senator Fitzgerald 
declined to serve, and the vacancy was filled by the national 
committee and not by the convention. Although to many 
this step was so irregular as to constitute no nomination at 
all, it was yet completely in accordance with party practice. 

1 Mr. Buchanan's Administration, by James Buchanan. New York, 
1866, p. 69. 
I 



114 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

In a number of cases vacancies in the lists of presidential 
electors on the tickets of both pai 'ies, caused by resignation, 
were filled by the state committee, and in at least two states 
the nomination to the lieutenant governorship was made in 
the same way. The inference was plain that the power ex- 
isted for all offices, although it was unique when applied to 
such a high office as the vice presidency. Certainly the 
practice would be followed at the present time.' 

There were objections to the large number of spectators 
both at Charleston and Baltimore, complaint of their inter- 
ference with the regular proceedings of the conventions, and 
suggestions that the number of delegates be cut down. 
Common adhesion to the importance and the rights of the 
states still prevented the predominance and the abuse of 
power by the national committee, now prevalent; but in 
almost every other respect the abuses of the convention 
system resembled those of the present day. Few modern 
bosses have equalled the tricks and the wiles practiced in 
these Democratic conventions of 1860. But neither Doug- 
lasites nor Breckenridgeites are to be greatly blamed ; they 
were simply playing the game according to the rules as these 
existed at the time. The stake was high. The only valid 
unfavorable criticism of the whole episode concerns rather 
the time and the circumstances of the practices in question. 
Defensible in the abstract, they were certainly less defensible 
when their influence was liable to inflame public opinion and 
fan further the kindling embers of secession and civil war. 

A pertinent question now suggests itself. Why did the 
Southern states after the Charleston secession seek to send 
their delegates back to the adjourned convention ? In view 
of the firm control of the Douglasites in the convention and 
the implacable hatreds that had been aroused on both sides, 

1 It may be noticed that while Edward Everett was considering declin- 
ing his nomination to the vice presidency on the Constitutional Union 
ticket, he suggested that the national committee might fill the vacancy. 



THE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTIONS 115 

it cannot have been expected by Yancey that his followers 
would be received back to the extent of surrendering to them 
the control, nor yet indeed can it be said that the imperious 
Yancey wished to repudiate his own acts. Moreover, had 
all been taken back, they would have but occupied the posi- 
tion that they occupied before the secession. Douglasites 
themselves, also, could not be expected to change their posi- 
tion and principles. Perhaps a desire to appear anxious for 
harmony and peace may have actuated them. But there 
must have been something beneath even this. It would 
seem that the Southerners did not expect to regain the con- 
trol but that they returned for the sake of committing more 
mischief ; they would break up the body further by inducing 
the border states to join them. The strategic importance of 
the support of these states was great. To them, as to a 
prize at stake, both conventions, regular and seceding, betook 
themselves ; their delegations furnished the largest number 
of the new recruits to the secessionists in the second with- 
drawal, and from them the seceders took their candidate. 
If the ethics of party politics sanctioned the one secession, 
they certainly would sanction the return in order to make 
this secession larger. 
What ultimate purpose actuated both secessions? Was 
' it a desire to destroy Douglas and his principles, or the Demo- 
cratic party, or the Union of the States ? It is certain that 
the destruction of candidate Douglas was not the sole object 
sought, for even after the loss of the platform this end could 
have been secured, under the operation of the two-thirds 
rule, merely by remaining in the Charleston body and voting 
against him to the end.^ Coupled with the desire for per- 
sonal vengeance was devotion to Southern principles, and 
ithese two things together dictated the slaveholders' course. 



f 



Possibly the Southerners were afraid to take this chance for fear that 
the convention they might not be able to hold all their votes together ; 
reak in their ranks, a stampede to Douglas perhaps, might come. 



116 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

Historical perspective through the previous decade discloses 
the existence of these Southern principles years back, their 
too frequent sacrifice to the party exigency of carrying the 
Northern states, and the gradual formation of a purpose to 
yield no more. Hence the necessity of destroying Douglas 
and all that he stood for. Southern interests, and those 
alone, uncontaminated by any compromise or evasion, must 
be made supreme. 

The death of the party was not sought ; the Southerners 
were too good party men for that. It cannot be denied that 
Yancey and many of his associates ardently looked forward 
to a secession of the South from the Union and the formation 
of a Southern Confederacy ; and the opinion was expressed 
that this goal was now consciously in the foreground, and 
that the destruction of the Democratic Party was sought as 
a step in this direction. This is to attribute to the leaders 
of party politics more prevision than they usually possess ; 
they are best looked upon as the creatures of events, as op- 
portunists. The daily happenings in the wide world of 
national politics brought about secession, the realization of 
the vague hopes of many, with an inevitableness that no 
men or set of men could foresee or direct ; even the most 
ardent secessionists must have been surprised at the rapidity 
with which events proceeded. Not the death of the Demo- 
cratic party, then, nor yet the dissolution of the Union of the 
states was the compelling force back of the Charleston and 
Baltimore secessions ; the true motive was a desire to vindi- 
cate Southern principles, by securing the abasement of 
Stephen A. Douglas and his principles. 

It was a question of how best to serve slavery. The logic 
of daily events proved that the institution was in great and 
immediate danger. The Northern Democrats would give 
aid in one way, the slaveholders sought it in another. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION 

A BOUT William H. Seward, United States Senator from 
-^--*- New York, Republican politics centered in the opening 
months of 1860, just as Democratic politics centered about 
Stephen A. Douglas. Each was his party's intellectual 
genius, its boldest and most aggressive leader, greatest orator, 
and popular idol; each had written his name large in the 
legislative annals of the country in the past ten years ; and 
each now seemed destined at last to receive that greatest 
of all rewards to which any American may aspire, his party's 
nomination for the presidency of the United States. The 
leaders' struggles after this prize, their rivals' desperate ef- 
forts to thwart them, make up almost the whole story of the 
two conventions. 

The Repubhcan party was more united than the Demo- 
cratic party. Still new, with only one presidential cam- 
paign to its credit, there had not yet been time for jealousies 
greatly to disturb its national councils nor had two mutually 
exclusive sets of principles arisen to rend it in twain. Ar- 
guments on the presidential nomination, instead of going 
back ten years or more in search of historical proof, hinged 
rather on the question of availability. Why, then, did the 
new party, which so loved and honored its leader, fail to 
award him the coveted honor ? 

Seward fondly believed that the nomination would be his. 
From the time when he arrived home from a European trip 
late in December, 1859, feted and honored by the city gov- 
ernment of the metropoHs of the country, and greeted every- 
where along the line of the railroad by admiring crowds as a 

117 



118 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

great national figure, to the time when, just before the party 
convention, he left the Senate Chamber in Washington for 
his New York home, he lived in this expectation. To his 
fellow-senators, and to his visitors and guests, whom he en- 
tertained lavishly throughout the winter, he predicted that 
he would be named. Enemies as well as friends seemed to 
encourage him. On the one hand was the almost unanimous 
love of his own party, on the other almost universal Southern 
hatred ; scarcely a Southern orator, newspaper, or convention 
failed to denounce him by name as the arch fiend of political 
antislavery and to point to him as the next standard bearer 
of his party. 

Seward's leadership rested primarily on the idea of the 
"irrepressible conflict" which he had proclaimed in a speech 
in Rochester, New York, in 1858, in words that forever as- 
sociated his name with progressive and radical tendencies. 
''Shall I tell you what this collision means ? They who think 
that it is accidental, unnecessary, the work of interested or 
fanatical agitators, and therefore ephemeral, mistake the 
case altogether. It is an irrepressible conflict between op- 
posing and enduring forces ; it means that the United States 
must and will, sooner or later, become entirely a slaveholding 
nation, or entirely a free labor nation." ^ This thought, 

1 The idea was not new with Seward. Probably thousands of less 
important people before him had thought and expressed the same. The 
Richmond Enquirer, May 6, 1856, said: "Social forces so widely dif- 
fering as those of domestic slavery and attempted universal liberty, 
cannot long co-exist in the great Republic of Christendom. They can- 
not be equally adapted to the wants and interests of society. . . . The 
war between the two systems rages everywhere, and will continue to rage 
till the one conquers and the other is exterminated." In 1853 Henry 
Ward Beecher said : "Two great powers that will not live together are in 
our midst and tugging at each other's throats. They will search each 
other out, thoueh you separate them a hundred times. And if by an in- 
sane blindness yru shall contrive to put off the issue and send this un- 
settled dispute down to your children, it will go down, gathering volume 
and strength at every step, to waste and desolate their heritage. Clear 
the place. Bring in the champions.'' 



THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION 119 

long in the hearts and the minds of men and frequently ex- 
pressed previously, when taken up and uttered by the promi- 
nent pohtician at once placed the speaker at the front of the 
radicals, and as it was passed about from person to person 
in countless speeches, sermons, and editorials, it made con- 
verts unceasingly. By one happy phrase that would not 
down, Seward became sponsor for political antislavery. 
He was popular with the radicals as few great leaders have 
ever been. 

Soon he fell, ten years after Webster's seventh of March 
speech almost to a day. ''His knees gave way, his whole 
person trembled"; hke his great rival in the Democratic 
party, he faltered before " the great prize of his ambition," 
the presidency. 

Under the guise of a plea for the admission of Kansas as a 
state into the Union, he made an elaborate speech in the 
Senate in the course of which he announced his presidential 
platform. Like most contemporary utterances on the sub- 
ject of slavery, this speech first rehearsed the history of the 
contest. All was conciliation and conservatism. Not a 
sentence showed that the speaker ever so much as thought 
of the "irrepressible conflict"; under the fire of the fierce 
charge the world over that his radicahsm was responsible 
for the Harper's Ferry raid, he refused either to defend the 
magic phrase or even to name it. He tried to show that 
there was no such conflict and need be none, and that the 
North and the South might five with one another without 
jealous hatred. Instead of "slave" and "free" states, 
which Greeley said told the story very well, he coined the 
phrases "capital" and "labor" states. Glowing pane- 
gyrics of the Union fell from his lips almost without number 
and saintlike appeals to toleration and fraternity, and 
theatrical horror of Brown's treason. The latter and his 
men were a "band of exceptional men," "inspired by en- 
thusiasm peculiar to themselves," who "committed an act 



120 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

of sedition and treason" for which they were ''justly hung." 
Their death was "pitiable." Slavery itself was not attacked, 
no sympathy for the slaves was expressed. It was a pas- 
sionless speech, utterly ignoring moral issues, as brutal and 
as cold and as hard as steel, more like Stephen A. Douglas 
than Wilham H. Seward. 

A great cry went up that Seward had turned conservative, 
and his radical friends began to leave him as they had left 
Webster ten years earlier. At this day it is plain that the 
orator was under the spell of a fear of conservative reaction 
that set in after the Harper's Ferry raid, when radicals began 
to be afraid of themselves and became hke incendiaries who 
would help extinguish the flames which they themselves had 
kindled. But the fear was ill-founded, as was shown 
shortly in New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island 
where the spring state elections returned safe Republican 
majorities. The ''irrepressible conflict" had not abated 
one jot, and Seward should have been acute enough to 
realize it ; if he did realize it, and still ignored it, he was un- 
true to himself.^ 

A second class whom Seward failed to conciliate, but for 
whom largely the renunciation of the "irrepressible conflict" 
was made, were the ultra-conservatives in the Southern 
counties of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and 
Illinois, where there were many people of Southern blood 
and sympathies. These regions had gone Democratic in 
1856 and might do so again in 1860. Their people hated 
the "irrepressible conflict" and distrusted Seward for his 
contention that negroes should be allowed to vote; negro 

^ In the spring election in Rhode Island the Democrats put up no ticket 
of their own, but joined with a faction of the Republicans. This faction 
won and the victory was hailed by some as a Democratic victory, but it 
was this in no sense of the word. After the time of temptation was over, 
that is, after the convention, during the progress of the presidential cam- 
paign, Seward returned to the "irrepressible conflict" with his old time 
vigor. See p. 213. 



THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION 121 

equality, which the opposition with some plausibihty might 
argue that Seward upheld, they utterly rejected. The leader 
had turned conservative to please them, but the conversion 
was too late. 

Thirdly, it was essential for the new party, still unorganized 
in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, but destined soon to seek 
organization there, to draw within its ranks the remnants of 
the Know Nothing party in those states. This desirable 
end Seward's nomination could effect but poorly, since he 
had been one of the earliest and most persistent opponents 
of Know Nothingism. 

Fourthly, the rich merchant class of the Northeast became 
conspicuously lukewarm for the New Yorker, after the hue 
and cry aroused by John Brown began to threaten the loss 
of Southern trade. They placed their own pecuniary in- 
terests ahead of the nomination of any particular candidate, 
on matter how eloquent, cultured, and intellectual he might 
be and how devoted his following. 

The corruption of the New York legislature, controlled by 
Seward's party and bossed by Seward's boss, Thurlow Weed, 
was also a heavy load for the seeking candidate. In Congress 
Seward was known always to have voted for the most lavish 
expenditures and his administration at Washington, domi- 
nated by Albany standards, might be expected to be extrava- 
gant and corrupt. How could such a candidate avail against 
the rottenness of the Buchanan regime? The New York 
Tribune called the legislature of New York ''not merely 
corrupt but shameless" ; the New York Evening Post said: 
"Money is more powerful with our representatives at Albany 
than any consideration of law or justice." In the West, 
where the opposite reputation of ''Honest Old Abe" was 
growing fast, this attack on Seward had much effect. 

Finally, though of no little significance, Seward's political 
fortunes had to stem the tide of the opposition of Horace 
Greeley and the New York Tribune^ as was made evident in 



122 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 



the post-convention lamentations and disputes of New 
Yorkers. 

This displeasure of the extreme antislavery radicals, of 
the more extreme conservatives of the party, of the remnants 
of the Know Nothing party and of the commercial classes of 
the Northeast, the corruption of the New York legislature, 
and the opposition of the influential editor together slowly 
combined to create the impression that Seward, even if 
nominated, could not be elected. He had too many enemies ; 
the very power and prominence of his leadership was proving 
his undoing. 

A host of minor candidates were in the field, United States 
Senator William Pitt Fessenden of Maine, United States 
Senator John P. Hale of New Hampshire, United States 
Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts, ex-Governor Banks 
of Massachusetts, Speaker Pennington of New Jersey, Simon 
Cameron of Pennsylvania, Governor Salmon P. Chase, 
United States Supreme Court Justice John McLean, and 
United States Senator Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio, Cassius 
M. Clay of Kentucky, Caleb Smith of Indiana, Abraham 
Lincoln of Illinois, and Edward Bates of Missouri. If 
Seward could be defeated for the nomination, which of these 
was the one to do it ? What one could best weld together 
the divergent factions ? Upon whom could the Seward op- 
position unite ? It was Seward against the field. 

With the party weighing such considerations, the candidate 
and not the platform being the chief issue, the time for the 
convention drew near. 

Seward's birthday, the 16th of May, was the day of meet- 
ing.^ The convention hall in Chicago, especially constructed 



^ This (lato was fixed by tlio national eommittoe. The call for the con- 
vention was issued the previous December, and unlike calls of the present 
day, it contained an enumeration of issues on which voters were invited 
to enter the party. This declaration wa:; later superseded by the regular 
party platform adopted by the convention. 



THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION 123 

for the purpose, held ten thousand people. Twenty-four 
states, four more than at the Breckenridge convention at 
Baltimore, were represented by four hundred and sixty-six 
delegates; of the slave states. North Carolina, Tennessee, 
Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, 
and South Carolina sent no delegates, although several were 
present from Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, Kentucky, and 
Missouri, and, as alleged, from Texas. So great was the 
Repubi'.can anxiety to disprove the charge that the party did 
not exist in the South and was, therefore, w^holly sectional, 
that a delegation of six, later shown to have been composed 
of one Canadian and five men from the neighboring state of 
Michigan, was admitted to sit for the last named state. But 
the palpable fraud deceived no one, for all knew that not one 
Republican vote had been cast in Texas in 1856 and that in 
all the six slave states recorded as present less than fourteen 
hundred votes had been mustered for the party. Delegates 
were admitted from the two territories, Kansas and Ne- 
braska,^ and from the District of Columbia. 

After the initial contest over the Southern delegates was 
settled, a second was at once precipitated by the report of the 
committee on the order of business, controlled by the anti- 
Seward men, to the effect that the presidential nominee be 
required to secure a majority, not of the votes cast, but of the 
votes which would be cast if all the states were present. 
This, if adopted in the absence of so many states, would 
amount to a practical acceptance of the two-thirds rule of 
the Democrats and would be a blow so openly aimed at 
Seward that its defeat by a vote of three hundred and fifty- 
eight to ninety-four sent the latter's stock up very high. 
There was, finally, a slight contest over the insertion into the 
platform of the Declaration of Independence. Apart from 
these three contests and in marked contrast to the proceed- 
ings of the Democratic conventions, everything was harmony. 
1 The Democrats did not thus admit the territorial delegates. 



124 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

This was commented upon. In the minds of all who recalled 
the split of the Democrats it was significant that the rejection 
of the two-thirds rule at Chicago was passed quietly. 

The platform was conservative. At the party's first 
national gathering four years earlier, when it was deemed 
necessary to be passionate and revolutionary in order to 
arouse men, slavery and polygamy were denounced as ''twin 
relics of barbarism," and the prohibition of territorial slavery 
by Congressional action was strongly demanded. On this 
territorial issue alone the earlier campaign had been waged. 
Now, with the antislavery Republicans in control of prac- 
tically every Northern state, the revolutionary work was 
over; the times seemed no longer to demand sectional de- 
nunciation and insults to slaveholders. Less than one- third 
of the new platform concerned slavery, whereas five-sixths 
of the earlier document touched upon the subject. In 
the interests of conservatism the offensive phrase, ''twin 
relics of barbarism" was now omitted, as likewise the 
right and duty of Congress to prohibit slavery in the terri- 
tories by positive legislative enactment, though this latter 
power was not definitely disowned ; there was the colorless 
statement, to wit: "We deny the authority of Congress, of 
a territorial legislature, or of any individuals, to give legal 
existence to slavery in any territory of the United States." 
The intention of this clause was not defined except by in- 
ference and weak statement ; it was confessedly an attempt 
at evasion and came dangerously near offering the country 
a weak solution of popular sovereignty. Voters could see 
that the right of the people of the territories to control slavery 
within their own limits was not opposed, and that the oppo- 
site power of Congress to exclude slavery from the territories 
was not affirmed.^ 

' Perhaps the Republicans took this backward step in order to give no 
aid and comfort to the Breckenridgeites, who demanded a Congressional 
slave code for the territories ; for Congress to adopt this code would be by 



THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION 125 

The principles of 1856 had contained no guarantee of the 
inviolabihty of slavery in the states, but now a clause was 
inserted declaring that 'Hhe right of each state to order and 
control its domestic institutions is essential." John Brown 
was aspersed in the words: "We denounce the lawless in- 
vasion by armed force of the soil of any state or territory, no 
matter under what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes." 
The logical conclusion of the Dred Scott Decision, the ex- 
tension of slavery into the free states, was not met. All this 
truckling (or conservatism, as it was called by staunch Re- 
publicans) was beheld with dismay by the abolitionists, who 
also searched in vain for denunciations of the fugitive slave 
law and of the existence of slavery in the District of Columbia 
under the sufferance of the national Congress. The slave 
trade was denounced. Nev/ doctrines, not mentioned at 
Philadelphia, were included in the demands for a protective 
tariff "to encourage the development of the industrial in- 
terests of the whole country," for a homestead act, for internal 
improvements of rivers and harbors by the national govern- 
ment, and for a continuation of the existing naturalization 
laws; a Pacific Railroad was again demanded, and the 
corruption of the Buchanan administration was attacked. 
These questions of national development, aside from the 
transcontinental railroad and the naturalization law^s, were 
pecuUar to the party. While the opposition was concen- 
trating on territorial slavery, the Republicans, in the interests 
of conservatism, were seeking to widen the field of attention 
of voters to other issues. 

Between the adoption of the platform on the second day 
and the ensuing nominations, night intervened, during which 
caucusing by the different state delegations went on in lively 
fashion ; those doubtful were addressed and importuned by 

inference to legislate for the territories, that is, to exercise control over 
them. The Republicans may therefore have thought it was not wise to 
go too far in the direction of Congressional control. 



126 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

various orators, including the chairman of the Pennsylvania 
state committee, William M. Evarts of New York, and 
Horace Greeley. It was reported that the RepubUcan 
gubernatorial candidates in the three critical states of Penn- 
sylvania, Indiana, and Illinois, where the Seward opposition 
was strongest, threatened to resign in case the latter was 
chosen, while the Pennsylvania and Indiana candidates, 
Curtin and Lane, in person delivered earnest threats and 
entreaties against Seward to caucus after caucus. Thus, in 
the night hours immediately before the delegates reas- 
sembled to nominate, the anti-Sewardites delivered their 
last blows. Had the convention, after agreeing upon the 
platform, proceeded at once to the nominations, instead of 
putting off this part of its work to the next day, many be- 
lieved that the Seward successes of the day over the two- 
thirds rule and the platform, for the platform well repre- 
sented Seward, would have landed the coveted prize. As 
it was, adjournment lost it.^ 

On the first ballot twelve names appeared, on the second, 
eight, and on the third and last only four. So quickly was 
achieved one of the saddest and most fortunate steps in 
American politics. For the sake of success the party's 
representative man, the one whose services doubtless de- 
served its highest honors, was cast aside for one of less promi- 
nence and fewer enemies. 

Lincoln's debates with Douglas in 1858 had given him 
some national prominence, and a few speeches in states out- 
side of Illinois had increased his growing reputation away 
from home, as for example, in Ohio, New York, and Connect- 
icut; furthermore having beaten Douglas on the popular 
vote in Illinois for the United States senatorship, he could 

^ Adjournment was probably secured by a trick. When the time for 
nominations came, in the regular order of business, the secretaries re- 
ported that they had not prepared paper on which to enter the results of 
balloting, and this announcement secured adjournment. 



THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION 127 

probably be relied upon to do it again as presidential can- 
didate in all the Northwest. His greatest asset was ob- 
scurity. On the national stage he had not offended influen- 
tial factions in doubtful and critical states ; mutually jealous 
and antagonistic leaders he could easily unite because nothing 
that he had ever said or done, so far as they knew, could be 
an object of offense to any man. The argument of avail- 
ability never received a better illustration. 

Lincoln's reputation, so far as it went, was consistent. 
He had never hedged. It was now recalled that he had 
expressed the "irrepressible conflict" idea some months 
before Seward, and in words just as classic as those of the 
latter. At the outset of his senatorial campaign in 1858 he 
declared to the convention which nominated him: " 'A 
house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this 
government cannot endure permanently half slave and half 
free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not 
expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be 
divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. 
Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread 
of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the 
belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its 
advocates shall push it forward till it shall become alike 
lawful in all the states, old as well as new. North as well as 
South." Throughout the ensuing debates with Douglas, 
planting himself on the position that slavery was wrong, he 
persistently endeavored to arouse moral sentiment against 
the system, and this position he never ceased to put forward. 
In the early spring of 1860, while Seward in the Senate at 
Washington, in great fright, was doing his utmost to consign 
the "irrepressible conflict" to oblivion, Lincoln was travel- 
Ung in New York and New England, hammering away at the 
same old thought of the moral wrong of slavery. 

At Cooper Union in New York he expressed the belief that 
"if slavery is right, all words acts, laws, constitutions against 



128 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

it are themselves wrong, and should be silenced and swept 
away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its national- 
ity, its universality ; if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist 
on its extension, its enlargement. All they ask we could 
readily grant, if we thought slavery right ; all we ask they 
could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong. Their 
thinking it right and our thinking it wrong is the precise fact 
on which depends the whole controversy. Thinking it right, 
as they do, they are not to blame for desiring its full recog- 
nition as being right ; but thinldng it wrong, as we do, can 
we yield to them ? Can we cast our votes with their view, 
and against our own? In view of our moral, social, and 
political responsibilities, can we do this?" 

At New Haven, in what was in many ways the greatest of 
this series of speeches, Lincoln said : ''If I saw a venomous 
snake crawling in the road, any man would say I might seize 
the nearest stick and Idll it ; but if I found that snake in bed 
with my children, that would be another question. I might 
hurt the children more than the snake, and it might bite them. 
Much more, if I found it in bed with my neighbor's children, 
and I had bound mj^self by a solemn compact not to meddle 
with his children under any circumstances, it would become 
me to let that particular mode of getting rid of the gentleman 
alone. But if there was a bed newly made up, to which the 
children were to be taken, and it was proposed to take a 
batch of young snakes and put them there with them, I take 
it no man would say there was any question how I ought to 
act. That is just the case. The new territories are the 
newly made bed to which our children are to go, and it lies 
with the nation to say whether they shall have snakes mixed 
up with them or not. It does not seem that there could be 
much hesitation what our policy should be. Now, I have 
spoken of a policy based on the idea that slavery is wrong, 
and a policy based on the idea that it is right. But an effort 
has been made for a policy that shall treat it as neither right 



THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION 129 

nor wrong. It is based upon utter indifference. Its leading 
advocate has said : ' I don't care whether it is voted up or 
down.' ... Its central idea is indifference. It holds 
that it makes no more difference to us whether the territories 
become free or slave states than whether my neighbor stocks 
his farm with horned cattle or puts it into tobacco. All 
recognize this policy, the plausible sugar-coated name of 
which is popular sovereignty. This policy chiefly stands in 
the way of a permanent settlement of the question. I believe 
there is no danger of its becoming the permanent policy of 
the country, for it is based on pubhc indifference. There is 
nobody that 'don't care.' All the people do care, one way 
or the other." ^ 

Lincoln ran from nothing, he sugar-coated nothing, to 
propitiate enemies ; neither did he try to fool the pubhc by 
hair-splitting distinctions nor to coax and wheedle the South- 
erners by soft words. He ''stood upon principle," and "lo !" 
he was now "the candidate of a mighty party for the presi- 
dency of the United States." 

The more the candidate was disclosed, the more the radicals 
liked him, while the conservatives, with the example before 
them of the divisions of the Democrats and the everlasting 
possibihty of secession, were not estranged. The Know 
Nothings, opposed to slavery, freely accepted Lincoln, who 
had never opposed them; Whigs accepted him, because he 
had been one of them. He was not entangled with corrupt 
alhes, nor antagonized by commercial interests. ^ 

The Seward men, although greatly chagrined and grieved 

1 Abraham Lincoln; Complete Works. Ed. by John G. Nieolay and Jolin 
Hay, New York, 1894, I, 616. The same gives the New York speech, 
I, 599. 

2 Hamlin's nomination to the vice presidency followed without inci- 
dent on the second ballot ; and was intended in some degree to com- 
fort the New Yorkers for the defeat of their idol, since it was felt that 
they inclined to Hamlin for the second honors in preference to any 
other candidate. 



130 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

at the defeat of their beloved leader, accepted the result with 
as much grace as could be expected, and Seward himself, 
without a word of complaint, pledged his loyalty to the 
ticket, although he was still quietly nursing a calm, exas- 
perating superiority to Lincoln, which lasted not only 
throughout the campaign, but during the ensuing adminis- 
tration, and which must always be to his admirers a cause 
for regret.^ 

To the student of pohtical science the RepubUcan con- 
vention is not as interesting as that of the Democrats. Re- 
pubhcans then, as now, had no unit rule or two-thirds rule 
to manipulate and quarrel over, and no occasion arose to 
attack the theory of convention representation. Equally 
in the two conventions the influence of the National Chair- 
man and of the National Committee was insignificant. But 
at Charleston and at Baltimore the crowd of spectators was 
so small that it was always within the power of the presiding 
officer to clear the galleries to maintain order, while at Chi- 
cago this was impossible. With less than five hundred 
delegates set down in the midst of a vast crowd of ten thou- 
sand spectators, there was one continual blast of shouting 
and cheering from the opening to the close of the convention. 
For the first time in American political history artificially 
manufactured noise from thousands of throats intimidated, 

1 The Seward party in New York was very bitter against Horace 
Greeley for the latter's opposition at Chicago. It had been known that 
subordinate editors of the Tribune, Dana and Pike, were opposed to 
Seward, but Greeley's opposition had not been common knowledge. The 
latter was accused of treachery and badgered in many ways, until in self- 
defense he published in his paper, a letter which he had written to Seward 
in 1854, in which he showed how his antagonism to Seward had been of 
long standing and for sufficient reasons. Thus was Greeley's attitude at 
Chicago explained. It was current report that at Chicago, after the nomi- 
nation of Lincoln, Greeley had been heard to exclaim : "Now I have gotten 
even with Governor Seward," but this was denied. Greeley had dis- 
solved the political partnership with Seward because the latter refused to 
favor the nomination of Greeley to a state office in 1854. 



THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION 131 

and to some extent governed the deliberations of a national 
political convention.^ In the dispute over the Declaration 
of Independence the crowd's wild support of Giddings, Curtis, 
and Blair, who spoke in favor of incorporating that document 
into the platform, was most effective ; against the thousands 
the advocates of the so-called two-thirds rule could make no 
headway ; their influence for Lincoln is well known.^ 

1 The New York Independent, May, 31, 1860. 

^ The convention of the Constitutional Union party, which nominated 
John Bell of Tennessee for President and Edward Everett of Massachu- 
setts for Vice President, was held at Baltimore a few days before the 
Republican convention, but the convention itself was unimportant. The 
principles of this party will be considered later in connection with the 
general political campaign of all the parties. 



CHAPTER VII 

CAMPAIGN ARGUMENTS 

rjlHE Democratic conventions and the adjournment of 
-*- Congress late in June had scarcely passed when the 
actual campaign set in, remarkable for its length and the 
unusual division of public sentiment. There were radicals 
in the North and in the South, the Republicans and the 
Breckenridge Democrats, and conservatives in both sections, 
the Douglas Democrats and the Bell-Everetts, and each was 
bitterly arrayed against the others. 

The RepubUcans made capital of the charge of corruption 
brought against the Buchanan administration. Abundant 
evidence was at hand, although extorted by means that were 
perhaps unfair. Early in March the Covode Committee was 
appointed in the House of Representatives by a partisan vote 
and with no debate ''for the purpose of investigating whether 
the President of the United States or any other officer of the 
government, has by money, patronage, or other improper 
means sought to influence the action of Congress or of any 
committee thereof, for or against the passage of any law 
appertaining to the right of any state or territory ; and also 
to inquire into and investigate whether any officer or officers 
of the government have by combination or otherwise pre- 
vented and defeated, or attempted to prevent and defeat, 
the execution of any law or laws now on the statute book, or 
whether the President has failed to compel the execution of 
any law thereof. The said committee shall investigate and 
inquire into the abuses at the Chicago and other post offices, 
and at the Philadelphia and other navy yards, and as to any 
abuses in connection with the public buildings and other 

132 



CAMPAIGN ARGUMENTS 133 

public works of the United States. Resolved, further that 
as the President in his letter to the Pittsburg Centenary 
celebration of the 25th of November, 1858, speaks of the 
'employment of money to carry elections,' said committee 
shall inquire into and ascertain the amount so used in Penn- 
sylvania or any other state or states ; in what district it was 
expended and by whose authority it was done, and from 
what sources the money was derived, and report the names 
of the parties imphcated." 

These sweeping powers included in thek scope almost every 
branch of the internal administration of the country, and 
together with the work of other committees in both the House 
and the Senate, which gave themselves to similar tasks, they 
show the low estate to which the power and dignity of the 
presidential office was reduced. 

Before the committee proceeded to its task, the President, 
whose personal and pubhc honor seemed to be impugned, 
sent in to the House an immediate message of protest, based 
on the constitutional argument that the President, as an 
independent and coordinate branch of the government, was 
responsible only to the people, and that over him the House 
of Representatives had no power except that of impeach- 
ment ; and the proposed action could not possibly be con- 
strued to be an impeachment, inasmuch as the right of the 
accused, as a pubhc official, to defend himself, always granted 
in impeachment cases, was now denied. Moreover, it was 
unjust that Covode, the accuser, should be constituted the 
President's judge, as a member of the committee. "Since 
the days of the Star Chamber and general warrants there 
has been no such proceeding in England," declared the 
Executive. 

Precedent as well as common sense were on the side of the 
committee. President John Quincy Adams and President 
Andrew Jackson had both been subjected to a Senatorial 
investigation as to their use of the patronage, and President 



134 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

James K. Polk during the twenty-ninth Congress wrote: 
"If the House of Representatives, as the grand inquest of 
the nation should at any time have reason to beheve that 
there had been malversation in office by an improper use or 
apphcation of the pubhc money by a pubhc official, and 
should think proper to institute an inquiry into the matter, 
all the archives and papers of the Executive department, 
pubhc and private, would be subject to an inspection and 
control of a committee of their body." The action now 
proposed in 1860 in no sense constituted the accusation in- 
volved in impeachment proceedings, which the President 
gravely assumed, but was rather a prehminary step on which 
later impeachment proceedings might be based. ^ 

Damaging facts were unearthed. In the preceding six 
years Congress had ordered three and one-half million dol- 
lars' worth of printing, binding, and engraving, all of which, 
in the opinion of Cornehus Wendell, who had done the work, 
could have been done for fifty per cent less than the actual 
cost ; well over a milhon dollars had been wasted. Profits 
had gone for campaign purposes and for the support of 
administration papers, namely the Constitution in Washing- 
ton, and the Argus and the Pennsylvanian in Philadelphia. 
Quarrels between the editors of these papers and Wendell 
over the booty led up to the disclosures. It was brought to 
Ught that eleven thousand dollars of this money had been 
paid to the editor of the Pennsylvanian and five thousand 
dollars to the editor of the Argus. A part of Wendell's 
examination follows : ''Do you say, sir, to the Argus, by the 
direction of the Executive? Answer. Yes, sir. Question. 
I thought I understood you to say the other day that there 
was no compulsion exercised upon you to pay ; but that you 
considered you were, to a certain extent, bound to give to 

the Argus. Answer. Under the arrangement with . 

Allow me to say that obtained the contract and then ■ 

1 U. S. House Reports, 36 Cong., 1 Sess., Nos. 394 and 648. 



CAMPAIGN ARGUMENTS 135 

and his friend claimed a part, and I was directed to reduce 
the amount to and to pay an amount to . Ques- 
tion. Who directed you ? Answer. The Executive. Ques- 
tion. Whom do you mean by the Executive? Answer. 
James Buchanan." 

The editor of the Pennsylvanian, asked by what authority 
the Postmaster General distributed certain money, to which 
his paper laid claim, testified as follows: "I do not know, 
only from hearsay. Question. Had you any conversation 
with him on the subject? Answer. Yes, sir. Question. 
Were you willing to abide by it ? Answer. Yes, I had to do 
it. The President told me it was divided and I had to sub- 
mit. Question. Did the President say so ? Answer. Yes." 

In the Congressional elections of 1858 Wendell distributed 
from two hundred and fifty to two thousand two hundred 
and fifty dollars in each of ten Congressional districts. 
"Question. If you had not been in receipt of the proceeds 
of the public printing, would you have contributed money, 
as you say you have done, in the various Congressional dis- 
tricts ? Answer. I would not have been able to contribute 
so much. It was the profit I made out of the public printing 
that enabled me to contribute these amounts of money. The 
fact that I was in a pubhc position known to be remunerative, 
induced frequent calls upon me, to which I responded. 
Question. I wish to know whether or not there was an im- 
plied or expressed understanding between you and any 
Executive officer of the government that you should make 
these contributions out of the proceeds of the printing, for 
political purposes ? Answer. No, sir ; none, except as to 
contributions I made toward the support of certain news- 
papers which the President saw fit to assign to me to support. 
Question. Did any of these Congressional candidates make 
demands upon you? Answer. Not demands. They were 
simple requests." Asked his motives in dispensing so much 
money, Wendell rephed: "I looked upon it as a means of 



136 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

procuring from the Executive such work as was at his dis- 
posal." He spent thirty-eight thousand dollars to help elect 
Buchanan in 1856 and from thirty to forty thousand dollars 
in the spring of 1858 to put the Enghsh bill through Congress 
and thus end the Kansas question. This last was in the ex- 
pectation that "in going in for it I would be entitled to the 
favorable consideration of the government in matters per- 
taining to my business." ^ 

The Secretary of the Navy, acting "with the sanction of 
the President," was censured by a special resolution of the 
House of Representatives for corruption in his department. 
Coal, timber, and stores were purchased for the navy at 
outrageously high prices, and in both the Philadelphia and 
Brooklyn navy yards most disgraceful conditions existed. 
At the former yard it was a notorious fact that contracts 
were not let to the lowest bidder. In the following typical 
letter, imitated by all his rivals, a certain contractor pre- 
sented his claims: "On the score of politics, which I have 
never before mentioned, I have greater claims upon the gov- 
ernment than my competitors. Our shop at Bush Hill, Phil- 
adelphia, was the first institution in this country that raised 
the banner of Buchanan and Breckenridge. The day after 
the nomination we raised the standard, with two full length 
portraits of the President and of the Vice President, and at 
the election our shop furnished seven hundred and sixty- 
four votes for them. Notwithstanding the present mone- 
tary depression, we gave three hundred and twelve votes for 
the administration at the last election. We have supported 
the party with material aid by thousands of dollars, and 
worked hard, as any of the party in Philadelphia will 
testify." 

In the Brookljm yard patronage was divided between a 
few Democratic Congressmen of New York, and each laborer, 

1 For the Covode report, see U. S. House Reports, 36 Cong., 1 Sess.. 
No. 648. 



CAMPAIGN ARGUMENTS 137 

who well knew to whom he owed his position, was sure of his 
place so long as his patron remained on intimate terms with 
the President. The constructive engineer, master plumber, 
and master block-maker represented one Congressman, the 
master painter another, the master spar maker, master black- 
smith and the timber inspector another; each master se- 
lected the men under him and increased or decreased the 
force at will, subject only to the orders of his own master, the 
Congressman. The yard was a mere political machine. 
One representative tes.tified : ''The distribution of patronage 
by members of Congress was very deleterious on the purity 
of the elections ; injurious to the workmen, in that it teaches 
laborers and mechanics to look to pohtical influence for 
sustenance and support ; that he himself had been besieged 
and beset by hundreds of claimants at his house and in his 
office." Occasionally the poUticians fell into controversy 
with the masters, whom they had themselves placed in office. 

One wrote : ''Mr. tells me that you are to take men on 

on Tuesday. May I ask you to take him on and others 
whom I have asked you ? I will have my proportion of men 
under you; if you do not give them, I will lodge claims 
against you. You have turned away all the men from my 
district but one already." Upon the removal of another, 
his sponsor wrote: "You may set it down as a fact that I 
will have you removed if you don't put that man on again." 

An aggrieved Congressman wrote to the Secretary of the 
Navy that he could not get justice, that is, could not get jobs 
for the men in his district. "I appeal to you to vindicate 
my district from this unjust and partial discrimination. 

Mr. admits that he has not one man in his shop from 

my district" ; in answer to which the secretary wrote to the 
yard in part as follows: "The department desires that a 

fair and liberal course be pursued toward Mr. 's district, 

and wishes you to inquire into and report on this matter." 
Thereupon "substantial justice" was done. 



138 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

Those most strenuously recommended for places were 
generally very indifferent hands, who could find no employ- 
ment elsewhere. The history of the yard was little else 
than a record of idleness, theft, insubordination, fraud, and 
gross neglect of duty, of testimonials and gifts of gold watches 
and diamond pins to the masters by forced contributions 
from the men, and the ever present dominance of pohtics. 
Not without significance was the employment in all the navy 
yards of the country on the eve of the Congressional elections 
of 1858 of four thousand more men than had been employed 
six months earlier.^ 

With the knowledge and tacit consent of the President, 
who frequently talked over the matter with him, according 
to one witness, pohtical assessments were made on the men 
in the post office, custom house and navy yard in Philadel- 
phia, and in 1856 seventy thousand dollars had been raised 
in this way. Naturalization frauds were also unearthed. 

In the same net of calumnious charges the post-office 
department was involved by statements that tended to 
show that the appropriation of forty thousand dollars to 
print the post-office blanks was distributed to pohtical friends, 
who reaped thirty thousand dollars in profits. This was 
the patronage that had without avail been offered to John 
W. Forney, anti-Lecompton Democratic member in the 
House of Representatives from Pennsylvania, for his vote 
on the Lecompton constitution, and the same was now keep- 
ing alive two Democratic papers. 

The war department was attacked. A committee of 
investigation revealed the sale at Fort Snelling in Minnesota 
by the government, of a military reservation of eight thou- 
sand acres for ninety thousand dollars, or eleven dollars an 
acre. Notwithstanding the fact that the land, situated at 

^ For this report on the navy department, see U. S. House Reports, 
36 Cong., 1 Sess., No. 621. December 1, 1857, 7113 men were employed 
in the navy yards, May 15, 1858, 6697, November 1, 1858, 10,038. 



CAMPAIGN ARGUMENTS 130 

the junction of the Mississippi river with its most important 
tributary north of the Ilhnois, and almost certain to be the 
site of a large city, was worth far more than this, the 
partisan committee only dared to declare that the sale was 
"injudicious and improper" and had been conducted ''with- 
out proper competition." The same department, seeking a 
site for a fort near New York City, bought for considerably 
over one hundred thousand dollars some marsh land on 
Long Island, abounding in fever and ague, which had been 
offered for sale for commercial purposes for less than fifty 
thousand dollars.^ 

Almost every branch of the national administration, 
including the President and a majority of his secretaries, 
were thus besmirched by the mud of partisan politics, par- 
ticularly the President, to whom, dhectly or indirectly, 
most of the charges led. Seldom has a national Executive 
in a time of peace been so vehemently attacked. Cornelius 
Wendell would not be moved from his testimony that the 
President, whom he visited frequently, sometimes daily, 
personally knew of his operations. Repubhcans rejoiced 
openly at the success of their investigations. Their leading 
agency, the Covode Committee, reported no resolutions and 
framed no impeachment charges ; such charges indeed had 
probably not been planned. But one hundred thousand 
copies of the report of the committee and thousands of copies 
of the reports of the other committees were circulated among 
the voters, till the newspapers were filled with material on 
''Old Buck's" corruption and the campaign orators furnished 
with abundant ammunition. The latter by no means 
neglected the opportunity. ''Scoundrels," "rascals," "cor- 
ruptionists," "bands of thieves and robbers" and similar 
epithets were hurled in scorn and derision at the discredited 
administration in endless repetition.^ A fit candidate in 

1 The Congressional Globe, 36 Cong., 1 Sess., Vol. IV, App. p. 433. 

« For a Bell-Everett treatment of Buchanan's corruption, see pp. 331-332. 



140 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

every way to pit against this shocking corruption was 
"Honest Old Abe," against whom never a suspicion of 
dishonesty had been cast.^ 

The standards of the age in regard to the pubUc service 
were beginning to crumble before the very machinations of 
party poUtics itself. The Democrats represented the spoils 
system then at the height of power and prestige, and were 
no worse than all about them. But the system inevitably 
led to evil conditions and had now caught in its clutches 
the chief magistrate of the nation as the leading victim. 
Certainly the charges against the administration were sub- 
stantially true. The Republicans, on the other hand, for 
the purposes of partisan advantage unconsciously took a 
stand that looked to the coming reform of the civil service. 

The writhings of Buchanan, like those of any victim of 
circumstances, were pitiable to behold. Following the 
Covode report he sent to the House another message of 
protest, which repeated the arguments of the former message 
on the same subject, and in a secret letter, since published, 
he wrote to the editor of the New York Herald to secure 
support for himself from that great paper. The whole ef- 
fort of the committee was directed against himself alone, 
complained the President; they had examined every man, 
ex parte, who from disappointment or personal malignity 
could cast a shade upon the character of the Executive. 
''If this dragooning can exist, the presidential office would 
be unworth}^ of the acceptance of a gentleman. ... In per- 
forming my duties I have endeavored to be not only pure 
but unsuspected. I never have had any concern in award- 
ing contracts, but have left them to be given by the heads 
of the appropriate departments. I have ever detested all 
jobs, and no man at any period of my hfe has ever approached 
me on such a subject. The testimony of Wendell contains 

1 Undoubtedly the Weed-bossed Seward of Albany standards would 
not have made so strong an appeal in this respect to people as did Lincoln. 



CAMPAIGN ARGUMENTS 141 

nothing but falsehoods, whether for or against me, for he 
has sworn all round. . . . Do me what you may deem 
substantial justice." ^ 

Vastly more important than these charges of corruption 
in the existing administration, were the charges of political 
aggression, made against leading parties ; that they had em- 
braced entirely new principles unsanctioned by precedent in 
the history of their respective parties, was mutually charged. 

The Democratic party, in control of the government, was 
rapidly committing the country to a policy of national ex- 
pansion, which involved the acquisition as slave territory 
of Cuba, Mexico, and possibly parts of Central and South 
America,* the extension of slavery to the territories of the 
United States and to the free Northern states, and the re- 
opening of the foreign slave trade. The words of Douglas 
placed at the head of a prominent Southern paper, well 
represented the dominant party : ''We are bound to extend 
and spread until we absorb the entire continent of America, 
including the adjacent islands, and become one grand ocean- 
bound Republic. I do not care whether you like it or not ; 
you cannot help it; it is the decree of Providence. This 
country was set apart as an asylum for the oppressed of the 
whole world." ^ 

The attempt to acquire Cuba was a pohcy of long stand- 
ing, more or less prominent in the annals of the country 
from the first administration of George Washington. A 
recent Buchanan presidential message in favor of the pro- 
ject repeated the old arguments of trade, commerce, and 
geographical advantage, and a bill to place thirty milHon 
dollars in the hands of the President to acquire the island, 
though never passed, was urgently advocated by adminis- 
tration journals and followers in general. So acceptable 

1 The Works of James Buchanan, collected and ed. by John Basset 
Moore, Philadelphia and London, 1908-1910, X, 434. 

2 The Memphis Daily Appeal, August 14, 1860. 



142 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

was the policy that statesmen of all parties agreed that only- 
one more Democratic administration was needed to add the 
island to the domains of the country, by fair means or foul. 
By ''manifest destiny the Queen of the Antilles was gravi- 
tating towards the American shores." 

To Mexico, however, more immediate attention was 
given in this presidential year, just as Cuba had held the 
more prominent place in the public mind during Buchanan's 
first years. The President's annual message, December, 
1859, set forth the ''unhappy condition of the disturbed 
Republic." After almost constant revolution since the 
late war with the United States, a new Mexican constitution 
had been formed in 1857, with General Comonfort as Presi- 
dent. By a mihtary revolution, which within a month's 
time overthrew the new government, the supreme power fell 
to General Zuloaga, who was in turn opposed by General 
Juarez ; the former was a military adventurer, while the 
latter had legal claims to the presidency, based on the grounds 
that as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court he should accede 
to the chief magistracy during the absence of the regularly 
elected President. In spite of the recognition of Juarez 
by all civilized powers, including the United States, the 
rebel Zuloaga held out for some time, but finally transmitted 
his place to General Miramon, who was now in possession 
of the capitol at the City of Mexico, supported by the land- 
holding, imperial church party, against the constitutional 
liberal forces of the people behind Juarez, entrenched at 
Vera Cruz. Hopeless anarchy and civil war prevailed. 

Outrages of the worst description were committed. 
Though the two powers were nominally at peace with 
one another, the United States might as well have been at 
war with her neighbor. Important contracts with the citi- 
zens of the richer Repubhc, involving large expenditures, 
were defiantly voided by the Miramon government, the 
course of justice was interfered with, peaceful American citi- 



CAMPAIGN ARGUMENTS 143 

zens were expelled, and upon some forced contributions were 
levied. Many Americans Miramon arrested, some he exe- 
cuted. In April, 1859, three American physicians, who had 
been seized in the hospital at Tacubaya, while in attendance 
upon the sick and the dying of both sides, were speedily put 
to death without trial as well as without crime. Ormond 
Chase, a young American of courage and humanity, was ar- 
bitrarily executed at Tepic without even a conjecture on 
the part of his friends as to the cause of the arrest. "Other 
outrages," said the President to Congress, ''might be enu- 
merated, but these are sufficient to illustrate the wretched 
state of the country and the unprotected condition of the 
persons and the property of our citizens in Mexico." Claims 
were filed at Washington against the Southern Republic 
totalling ten milhon dollars. 

The President recommended that a law be passed author- 
izing him, under such conditions as might seem expedient 
to Congress, 'Ho employ a sufficient mihtary force to enter 
Mexico for the purpose of obtaining indemnity for the past 
and security for the future." The present case, in the Presi- 
dent's judgment, constituted an exception to the wise and 
settled pohcy of the United States not to interfere in the 
domestic concerns of foreign nations. Mexico was in a 
state of anarchy and confusion from which she could not 
extricate herself, nor could she prevent incursions of banditti 
into American territory; socially, commercially, and politi- 
cally the United States had a far deeper interest in her fate 
than had any other nation. If we did not extend the helping 
hand, some other nation would, and thus at last, under cir- 
cumstances of increased difficulty, we would be forced to 
interfere for the maintenance of the established American 
policy of the Monroe Doctrine. This earnest counsel Con- 
gress disregarded. 

Thus foiled, the President took up the policy of a treaty 
with the Juarez faction, and early in January, 1860, he sent 



144 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

to the Senate for ratification a 'Hreaty of transits and com- 
merce" and a ''convention to enforce treaty stipulations, 
and to maintain order and security in the territory of the 
RepubUcs of Mexico and the United States." Under the 
terms of these documents there was guaranteed to this coun- 
try pecuHar trade advantages, the secure possession and en- 
joyment, free of duty and of Mexican control, of the South- 
ern Tehuantepec route across Mexican territory from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific on the way to Cahfornia and Asia, 
and of two other similar routes in the North. In order to 
insure the execution of the treaty, the United States was 
authorized to lend to the Juarez faction both land and naval 
forces, and in return she herself agreed to pay four million 
dollars, one-half of which was to go to Mexico and one-half 
to American citizens with claims against Mexico. 

Two months later, while these treaties were pending in the 
Senate, and while the popular discussion of the various 
phases of slavery was already seething at white heat, the 
country was electrified by the news that the American 
squadron in the Gulf of Mexico had fired upon two Mexican 
vessels at Vera Cruz, that the fire had been returned, that 
blood had been shed and lives sacrificed. Were actual 
hostilities at hand? At last had the administration gained 
what many feared it was all along aiming at, — armed conflict 
for the coveted prize of more Mexican territory ? It trans- 
pired that two steamers of the Miramon faction, besieging 
the Juarez forces at Vera Cruz, had been intercepted by the 
United States vessels and on being ordered in the middle of 
the night to display their colors had answered by a volley : 
the firing becoming general, three Americans were wounded, 
one mortally, while fifteen Mexicans were killed and ten 
wounded.^ 

^ The two Mexican vessels were soon overpowered and towed to New 
Orleans, and there libeled as prizes in the courts of the United States, but 
the judge ruled that there was no actual conflict between the two coun- ■ 
tries and released the ships. 



CAMPAIGN ARGUMENTS 145 

The incident itself was small, but the warm approval 
which it elicited from the Democratic press of the country 
was truly alarming. In a prominent editorial, headed 
''Manifest Destiny" the Chicago Herald declared: ''It is 
becoming quite clear to men of sense that the United States 
can no longer refrain from taking a prominent and active 
part in the supervision and management of the affairs of 
our neighbors, the Mexicans. The utter incapacity of the 
Mexican people to govern themselves is no longer question- 
able. The interest of the civihzed world would be subserved 
and the interests of Mexico and the United States would be 
infinitely benefited by a determined and bold protectorate on 
the part of the United States. Our relations with Mexico 
are necessarily of a character that renders her continued 
anarchy, confusion, and lawless violence no longer suffer- 
able. However we might desire that our neighbors would 
save us this trouble, it is clear that oiu" destiny draws us for- 
ward to the control and final absorption of Mexico." ^ 
"The sick man is at the last gasp, and to his funeral we must 
go, no matter whether we relish it or not," said the New 
York Express.^ '' There can be no more backing down," said 
Frank Leslie's Weekly; "our government has at last acted 
with the vigor becoming a great nation." ^ 

Here was Democratic policy written spontaneously and 
indelibly in the administration press of the country, beyond 
the power of any quibbling party platform to add or to 
detract. Democrats of all factions were ready for the occu- 
pation and absorption of the sister Republic and believed 
that this would be speedily accomplished; Republicans, 
withholding approval, expected the same outcome. 

Meantime the Mexican treaties of the President were 
hanging fire in the Senate, where finally they were defeated 

1 The Chicago Herald, March 10, 1860. 

2 The New York Express, Mareii 20, 1860. , 

3 Frank Leslie's Illustrated Weekly, March 31, ISSrv 
ii 



146 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

despite the support of the administration party and of such 
conservative papers as the New York Times. The Charles- 
ton convention, convening within six weeks of the Vera Cruz 
incident, never mentioned the subject, and was apparently 
as dead toward Mexico as toward the President himself. 
Territories already acquired were, in the judgment of the 
ruling statesmen of the party, a better immediate issue on 
which to fight the Republicans for the presidency than was 
the forcible acquisition of new regions. If, as was charged, 
Buchanan had procured the Vera Cruz incident and had 
brought the country to the verge of a foreign war, for the 
sake of throwing a new issue before the country and thus 
preventing the threatened split of his party on the domestic 
question, he signally failed. But as has already been ob- 
served, the burst of approval by Democratic papers of what 
was supposed to be impending annexation of Mexico, se- 
curely fixed the step as good Democratic pohcy. 

A bullying, "big stick" attitude, with the approval of the 
party, had been displayed by the administration toward the 
South American Republics two years before the Mexican 
question became acute, in the dispatch to Paraguay of the 
greatest naval expedition in the country's history up to 
that time. In this poor and backward country of Paraguay 
in 1855 a sailor from the United States steamer Water Witch, 
while on a surveying expedition, had been killed by an 
attacking party of natives, and for the outrageous affront 
only a fleet of nineteen armed vessels, with two hundred 
guns and two thousand five hundred soldiers and marines, 
could exact adequate recompense and "achieve a happy 
effect in favor of our country throughout all that remote 
portion of the world." 

With the same Democratic approval, William Walker, 
filibuster, "gray-eyed man of destiny," was now engaged in 
planting in a "glorious land of promise the institutions of 
the South." This policy, aimed at the independence of 



CAMPAIGN ARGUMENTS 147 

Nicaragua and possibly of Honduras in Central America, 
held public attention throughout the fall months of the year, 
until Walker's capture by British intervention and his en- 
suing execution by the forces of Honduras, brought it to an 
inglorious end. At the same time the Italian Garibaldi was 
thriUing the world by his exploits in Sicily and Naples, and 
comparisons of the careers of the two men abounded. On 
the one hand was the ItaUan, noble, chivalrous, disinter- 
ested, and self-sacrificing, conquering kingdoms and despot- 
isms only to dedicate them to hberty; on the other, the 
American freebooter and pirate, inferior, mischievous, large 
in promise, but without the quaUties of leadership, attempt- 
ing to fasten his clutches on a weak province in the interests 
of human bondage. 

Yet the Mobile Register, a leading Southern paper, beheved 
the success of Walker to be ''of far more vital moment to 
the South than the suicidal policy of protection,^ which sets 
the brains of so many on fire, and serves so many others as 
a pretext to gratify their personal ambitions. No territory 
that we can acquire through the Federal government can be 
of use to the South, and every friend of the South ought to 
resist such acquisitions. We have not negroes enough for 
our own use, much less to people new countries, and the slave 
trade cannot be legally opened for a good while yet. But 
the estabUshing, on the Southern frontier, of slaveholding 
Repubhcs, encouraging and legalizing the importation of 
Africans, impairs no estabhshed financial interest of our own, 
and gives us natural allies, who may eventually, if deemed 
proper, be connected to us by close ties. This is the true 
Southern poHcy, and one well understood by those who 
have preserved their soberness of mind amid the senseless 
clamor which has caused so many of the Ajnerican people to 
go mad." 2 

^ That is, protection to slavery in the territories of the United States, 
* Quoted in the New York Times, August 21, 1860. 



148 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

The work of the secret order of the Knights of the Golden 
Cu-cle, organized in 1854 and now actively bent on pro- 
slavery interference for Jnarez in Mexico, was not without 
significance. Although the importance of the movement was 
assuredly exaggerated, it cannot be doubted that it existed 
in some form. 

United States Senator Brown of Mississippi summed up 
to his constituents the Southern attitude as follows: ''I 
want Cuba; I want Tamaulipas, Potosi, and one or two 
other Mexican states; and I want them all for the same 
reason ; for the planting and the spread of slavery. And 
a footing in Central America will powerfully aid us in ac- 
quiring those other states. Yes, I want these countries for 
the spread of slavery. I would spread the blessings of 
slavery, like the blessings of the Divine Master, to the 
uttermost ends of the earth; and rebelUous and wicked as 
the Yankees have been, I would even extend it to them." ^ 

A severe criticism of this bold policy was voiced by Sena- 
tor Crittenden of Kentucky. Once the government had 
striven to maintain amity and kindly relations with the 
states of South America and had succeeded. These states 
had come into the world as free nations under our auspices, 
the United States being their exemplar and protection ; the 
good will of a whole continent was freely ours. Now this 
mighty fund of national strength, so nobly achieved, was 
giving way to suspicion and fear. Under a new policy the 
Washington government was searching the whole continent 
for little causes of offense and quarrel. A Yankee could no 
sooner go traveling abroad than somebody imposed on him, 
cheated him, or struck him and he came to the government 
with a claim. The Paraguayan chief, Topez, who was in no- 
wise as formidable as a Cherokee Indian chief in this country, 
frrr^d a gun at one of our ships, and stole some property of 
an American citizen, and lo ! the country's largest armada 

' The Congressional Globe, 36 Cong., 1 Sess., Vol. I, p. 571. 



4 



CAMPAIGN ARGUMENTS 149 

must be dispatched to obtain redress. This was both un- 
dignified and ridiculous.^ 

In their opposition, the RepubHcans revived the spu-it of 
the Wilmot Proviso of Mexican War times, and laid stress 
on the inevitable spread of slavery consequent upon the pro- 
posed expansion. In the name of freedom only they were 
expansionists. Senator Seward confidently looked to the 
addition of British America, Russian America, and Spanish 
America to the United States, all united in a land of freedom ; 
the men were then living, said the Senator, who would see 
this consummation.^ 

Up to this point in the program of expansion, Democrats 
of every stripe were in accord; they all coveted Cuba, 
Mexico, parts of Central and perhaps of South America, 
little questioning the desirability of such acquisitions. 

Another step in the program involved the precise manner 
of the spread of slavery into the Western territories already 
acquired. The contest on this point between the Demo- 
cratic factions, almost entirely of a historical character, 
has already been described ; ^ between the Douglasites and 
the Republicans the fight was just as hot.^ Douglas harked 
back to the American Revolution for the beginning of his 
great principle of self-government. ''The dogma that a 

1 The Life of John J. Crittenden, by Ann Mary Butler Crittenden, Phila- 
delphia, 1871, II, 176-177. 

2 The New York Herald, September 20, 1860 ; this is an extract from a 
speech delivered by the Senator at St. Paul, Minnesota. 

3 See pp. 92-101. 

* Against the Breckenridge contention that Congress should pass a 
slave code for the territories it was pointed out more than once that such 
procedure by an act of Congress would simply be an exercise of the 
same power over the territories that the Republicans argued for. If 
Congressional legislation could protect slavery in the territories, would 
not that very act constitute a precedent for further Congressional action, 
this time forbidding slavery? There was no difference in the two acts. 
This argument disregarded the stand of the Supreme Court in the Dred 
Seott case. 



150 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

citizen of the territories derives his power from Congress is 
the old Tory idea that the citizens of the colonies derived 
their power from the Crown. We exploded this idea in the 
War of the Revolution, and the principle of popular sov- 
ereignty was born. We hold, therefore, that the citizen 
does not derive power from Congress, for he has already 
derived it from Almighty God." ^ The settler, going to a 
territory, was entitled to as much self-government as the 
English colonist. "You do not doubt but that the right of 
self-government is an inherent right in North Carolina. If 
it be an inherent right in this state, let me ask you, when you 
emigrate to Kansas, at what point of time do you forfeit 
that right ? Do you lose all the sense, all the intelligence, 
all the virtue you had, on the wayside, while emigrating to 
a territory of the United States? . . . Those of us who 
penetrated into the wilderness think that we know what 
kind of laws and institutions will suit our interests quite as 
well as you who never saw the country. . . . You cannot 
convince us that we are not as good as our brothers, who 
remain in the old states." ^ 

The attractive power of these simple arguments was very 
strong. Whether constitutional and legal or not, said the 
New York Times, popular sovereignty in the territories as 
to slavery had a strong hold on the masses ; it satisfied the 
instincts of nine-tenths of the Uberty-loving people of the 
North as a fair, just, and safe way of solving a hard prob- 
lem.^ The New York Tribune went so far as to suggest that 
Congress allow the people of Dakota, Idaho, Arizona, and 
Nevada to organize themselves as territories, elect their 
own officials, and govern themselves through their own legis- 
lature, while a third leading Repubhcan paper, the Spring- 

1 The Springfield Tri-Weekly Republican, July 23, 1860. 
^ The Newbern Daily Progress, September 5, 1860 ; this is from the 
speech delivered by Douglas at Raleigh, North Carolina. 
3 The New York Times, June 26, 1860. 



CAMPAIGN ARGUMENTS 151 

field Republican, believed that Congressional power over 
the territories, proclaimed as Republican doctrine in the 
party platform of 1856 but evaded in that of 1860, had 
ceased to be a test of true RepubHcanism. Many of the 
party deemed the principle unnecessary and unwise, and 
few had any idea that it would ever be carried out in actual 
practice.^ 

In their formal platform utterances on the subject the 
Republicans, far from openly opposing Douglas' position, 
contented themselves with a vague and half-hearted decla- 
ration that under the constitution, which guaranteed life, 
liberty, and happiness to all persons except when withheld 
by the due process of law, slavery could not legally and con- 
stitutionally be set up in the territories by any power. When 
over the veto of the territorial Governor the territory of 
Kansas at last excluded slavery from its midst, the whole 
Republican press applauded, forgetful for the moment of 
Congressional control ; when in the territory of Nebraska 
a Governor's veto destroyed the territorial act to forbid 
slavery there, the same press rose up in indignation. Practi- 
cally the Repubhcans wanted slavery to be forbidden in the 
territories but cared httle by what power this was accom- 
plished, whether by Congress or by the people of the terri- 
tories themselves; the end and not the means was the 
important thing. Congressional control was a makeshift, 
a convenient weapon with which to oppose the possibility 
of the estabhshment of territorial slavery by the territory 
itself, which was always the lurking danger of popular 
sovereignty. This very opportunism was a tribute to the 
power of the Douglas principle. 

A few Republican orators, but only a few, boldly attacked 
Douglas' position. Only by giving the blacks themselves 
a vote on their own enslavement could true popular sover- 
eignty on the subject be secured ; it was wrong everywhere 

1 The Springfield Tri-Weekly Republican, September 28, 1860. 



152 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

to allow whites deliberately to enslave blacks. Let there 
be white and black sovereignty on the question, not white 
alone. It was blasphemy for Douglas to declare: "This 
government was made by white men, on the white basis, 
for the benefit of white men and then- posterity forever, 
and should be administered by white men, and by none other 
whatsoever;" double blasphemy for him to say: "\Vlien 
the struggle is between the white man and the negro, I am 
for the white man ; when it is between the negro and the 
crocodile, I am for the negro." To suppose that even 
popular sovereignty meant complete territorial control was 
an unmitigated and unadulterated sham, for over the terri- 
torial legislature stood the Governor's veto, over him his 
appointment and control by the President of the United 
States, and over all the Supreme Court; Httle was in the 
end really left to the people. Moreover, territorial slavery 
would inevitably lead to the extension of the conditions 
of social terrorism, which then obtained in the Southern 
states ; freedom-loving whites would be hounded out ; their 
free discussion throttled ; then newspapers, their Tribunes, 
Independents, and Posts, debarred; their preachers' hps 
sealed. To fasten on the virgin soil of the West, the 
South as it existed in 1860, would be a blow to civihzation 
and progress, to which no American should give sanction.^ 

Andrew Johnson, a Douglas United States Senator from 
Tennessee, turned the tables by asking what the Republi- 
cans would do with the blacks in the territories. Would 
they allow them to hold office, sit on juries, give testimony 

1 Early in the spring, in the House of Representatives at "Washington, 
the Republicans by a trick forced the hand of the Democrats by bringing 
up for vote the question of forbidding by Congressional action a domestic 
institution of the West, namely polygamy. This bill passed the House 
by a vote of one hundred sixty to one hundred and forty-nine. If 
Congress possessed the power to forbid this territorial institution, why 
could it not also forbid slavery in the territories, another domestic insti- 
tution ? 



CAMPAIGN ARGUMENTS 153 

in the courts, serve in the miUtia, and send their children to 
the pubhc schools on an equal basis with white children? 
None could tell, and the Repubhcans would not answer. 

From squatter sovereignty the contest extended to the 
question of loyalty to the Supreme Court, which had come 
suddenly to be the chosen agency of the Breckenridgeites to 
achieve the spread of slavery to the territories. Brecken- 
ridge praised and supported that tribunal for the Dred 
Scott decision, while Douglas, although forswearing this par- 
ticular decision, still promised to obey when another was 
delivered.^ Why thus did the Democracy turn its back on 
an unbroken record of more than a half century ? A single 
decision in favor of slavery was the determining factor. 
Thomas Jefferson, the father of the party, who opposed the 
court almost from the time of his entrance into the cabinet of 
President Washington, said in 1810 : "But the opinion which 
gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are consti- 
tutional and what not, not only for themselves in their ovv^n 
sphere of action, but for the legislative and executive also in 
their spheres, would make the judiciary a despotic branch." 
To the end of his life in 1825 the great statesman led his 
party in violent opposition to the court. In 1832, President 
Andrew Jackson, the next great name in the history of the 
party, said in a presidential message : "If the opinion of the 
Supreme Com*t covered the whole ground in this case, it 
ought not to control the coordinate authorities of this 
government. The Congress, the Executive, and the Court 
must each for itself be guided by its own opinion of the 
constitution. Each public officer, who takes an oath to 
support the constitution, swears that he will support it as he 
understands it, and not as it is understood by others. It is 
as much the duty of the House of Representatives, of the 

1 This step was in advance of the Freeport doctrine, and was taken in 
the spring of 1860 in the Douglas convention platform. It was another 
"twist" of candidate Douglas, adept in the art of political shifting. 



154 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

Senate, and of the President, to decide upon the constitu- 
tionahty of any bill or resolution which may be presented 
to them for passage or approval, as it is for the Supreme 
Judges, when it may be brought before them for judicial 
decision. The opinion of the judges has no more authority 
over Congress than the opinion of Congress has over the 
judges; and in that point the President is independent of 
both. The authority of the Supreme Court, therefore, 
must not be permitted to control the Congress or the Execu- 
tive when acting in their legislative capacities, but to have 
only such influence as the force of their reasoning may 
deserve." 

Buchanan himself, who now praised the tribunal, while a 
Senator of the United States said to his fellow-senators in 
1841 : "But even if the judges had settled the question, I 
should never hold myself bound by their decision, whilst 
acting in a legislative capacity. UnUke the Senator from 
Massachusetts, I shall never consent to place the poHtical 
rights and hberties of the people in the hands of any judicial 
tribunal. . . . The experience of all ages and countries has 
demonstrated that judges instinctively lean toward the 
prerogatives of government ; and it is notorious that the 
Court, during the whole period in which he presided over it, 
embracing so many years of its existence, has inclined toward 
the highest assertion of Federal power." ^ 

Every Democratic national convention previous to 1860 
breathed the same spirit of hostiUty to the august tribunal. 
But at last, in a trice, because an important decision in 
their favor, the party turned into upholders of the court. 

It was now the part of the antislavery party to revile the 
tribunal, which had turned so squarely against them. One 

1 This is a reference to Chief Justice Marshal. Roscoe Conkling, 
member of the House of Representatives from New York state, made a 
great speech on this subject ; see the Congressional Globe, 36 Cong., 1 
Sess., Vol. IV. App., p. 233. 



CAMPAIGN ARGUMENTS 155 

of the Republican leaders, United States Senator Henry 
Wilson of Massachusetts, declared: "We shall change the 
Supreme Court of the United States and place men in that 
court who beUeve with its pure and immaculate Chief Jus- 
tice, John Jay, that our prayers will be impious to Heaven, 
while we sustain and support human slavery." Senator 
Seward said : ''Let the court recede. Whether it recedes or 
not, we shall reorganize the court and thus reform its polit- 
ical sentiments and practices and bring them into harmony 
with the constitution and the laws of the nation." Lincoln 
said : ''If I were in Congress, and a vote should come up on 
a question whether slavery should be prohibited in a new 
territory, in spite of the Dred Scott decision, I would vote 
that it should." Senator Sumner said: "I am abound to 
disobey this act." ^ 

Support of the Supreme Court of the United States was 
plainly a matter of pohtical expediency. 

Further still, in the development of their expansionist 
ideas, the slaveholders cast longing glances in the direction of 
the free states of the North and hoped sometime to be able 
to take their slaves there with impunity. Why not? It 
was recognized that a logical conclusion from the Dred Scott 
decision looked in that direction, for if the constitution with 
its guarantees of property rights fastened slavery on the 
territories, so also did it on the free states, where the same 
constitution was operative. Lincoln recognized this in the 
debates with Douglas. Only a definite judicial decision on 
the special point was needed to complete the revolution, and 
this was expected in the coming settlement of the Lemmon 
case in the national tribunal. Yet, with all this impending, 
it cannot be said that this matter was a clear cut issue in the 
campaign. Few RepubUcans in their public utterances 

1 For these references, see the New York Herald, October 9, 1860 ; for 
more material on Lincoln's position, see Abraham Lincoln; Complete 
Works, ed. by John G. Nicolay and John Hay, New York, 1894, I, 255. 



15G PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

referred to it, and Democrats never. Doubtless the former 
felt that they could win without the revolutionary slogan 
that the very liberty of their own states was at stake, and 
that the South, which was already committing itself to the 
extreme of secession, ought not to be further exasperated. 

A reason for the desire for the repeal of the laws forbidding 
the foreign slave trade is now apparent. To reopen the 
trade would be to bring in thousands of fresh Africans and 
thus cap the climax of the whole imperialistic program. 
With Cuba, Mexico, and parts of Central and South America 
added to the domains of the United States as a great slave- 
holding Repubhc, with the Western territories and the 
Northern free states open to the institutions of slavery, there 
would be need of more blacks to fill the new places, to cul- 
tivate the new areas, and reduce them to a slavery status. 
There would be ample room for all the Africans who could 
be secured. 

This vast scheme of slavery extension, now well developed 
and openly adopted by the Democratic party, was beheld by 
many with amazement, for its successful execution involved 
certain radical changes, that fairly laid the party open to the 
charge of aggression in having entirely altered its funda- 
mental principles. 

Only twelve years back, in 1847 and in 1848, the Democ- 
racy, in every free state but one, was in strong opposition to 
slavery in the territories to be acquired from Mexico. The 
Democratic legislature of Michigan resolved in 1847 : ''That 
in the acquisition of any new territory, whether by purchase, 
conquest, or otherwise, we deem it the duty of the general 
government to extend over the same the Ordinance of 1787, 
with all its rights and privileges, conditions and immunities." 
The Democratic legislature of New Hampshire declared in 
the same year : "We are opposed to the extension of slavery 
over any such territory ; and we also approve the vote of our 
senators and representatives in Congress in favor of the 



CAMPAIGN ARGUMENTS 157 

Wilmot Proviso;" the same was passed in 1848, while in 
1849 this legislature declared : "We are firmly and unalter- 
ably opposed to the extension of slavery over any portion of 
American soil now free." The Democratic legislature of 
Rhode Island, 1847, placed itself on record ''against the ac- 
quisition of territory by conquest or otherwise, beyond the 
present hmits of the United States, for the purpose of estab- 
Hshing therein slaveholding states." In 1847 the Demo- 
cratic legislature of New York passed a resolution for an 
''unalterable, fundamental article or provision, whereby 
slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for 
crime, shall be forever excluded from the territory acquired 
or annexed" from Mexico; in Pennsylvania the same year 
the Democratic legislature put itself on record "against any 
measure whatever, by which territory will accrue to the 
Union, unless as a part of the fundamental law, upon which 
any compact or treaty for this purpose is based, slavery or 
involuntary servitude, except for crime, shall be forever 
excluded." The Democratic legislatures of Ohio, Connect- 
icut, Illinois, and Wisconsin took the same position. In 
1849 the Democratic state convention in Indiana resolved : 
"That the institution of human slavery is at variance with 
the theory of our government, abhorrent to the common 
sentiment of mankind, and fraught with danger to all who 
come within the sphere of its influence; that the Federal 
government possesses adequate power to inhibit its existence 
in the territories of the Union; that the constitutionahty 
of this power has been settled by judicial construction, by 
contemporaneous exposition, and by repeated acts of Con- 
gress, and that we enjoin upon our senators and representa- 
tives in Congress to make every exertion, and employ all 
their influence, to procure the passage of a law forever ex- 
cluding slavery from the territories of California and New 
Mexico." In 1849 the Democratic state convention of 
Massachusetts resolved: "That we are in opposition to 



158 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

slavery in every form and color, and in favor of freedom and 
free soil wherever man lives, throughout God's heritage. 
That as slavery does not exist by any municipal law in the 
new territories, and Congress has no power to institute it, 
the local laws of any state, authorizing slavery, can never be 
transplanted there; nor can slavery exist there but by a 
local law of the territories, sanctioned by Congress." 

As was said by the RepubUcans, who brought all these 
ji Democratic resolutions to hght, here was ''pretty good 
\ Repubhcan doctrine coming from high Democratic author- 
\ ity." How quickly the subservient Northern Democrats 
followed their Southern brethren away from freedom into 
proslavery ground ! Through what a proslavery labyrinth 
of aggression had the Northern Democrats been led in twelve 
short years ! Either to follow Breckenridge into the extreme 
professions of proslavery or to follow the milk and water 
declarations of Douglas, untouched by any moral enthusi- 
asm for human rights, which might or might not mean 
slavery, to do either of these things was to take a step that 
was hardly thought of in the North in 1848.^ 

These Democratic resolutions, calUng for the prohibition 
of slavery in the territories, distinctly named Congress as 
the agency through which the prohibition was to be accom- 
pHshed. Tliis reveals a second sense in which the slave- 
holders were working a revolution in general party principles. 
In demanding popular sovereignty on the subject of slavery 
in the territories or in planting themselves on the Calhoun- 
Yancey-Taney dogma, they were in either case getting away 
from Congressional control and were thus departing from 
previous Congressional practice. From 1787 to 1847 Con- 
gress, on at least eighteen different occasions, and during 
each Democratic administration, exercised power over the 
territories, giving them officers and giving or withholding 

1 For the Democratic resolutions, see the Congressional Globe, 36 Cong., 
1 Sess., Vol. II, p. 2311. 



CAMPAIGN ARGUMENTS 159 

approval to the acts of territorial legislatures. From 1823 
to 1838 Congress five times approved of the laws of the 
territory of Florida and eleven times amended them. In 
Washington's first administration the Northwest Ordinance 
of 1787 was reenacted ; in that of John Adams the same was 
reenacted for the newly organized territory of Indiana ; in 
Jefferson's time the territory of Orleans was organized with 
slavery and certain restrictions, the cession of the Western 
lands of Georgia accepted with restrictions, and Governor 
St. Clair of the Northwest Territory dismissed from office 
for saying that an organized territory was without the control 
of Congress; Madison's administrations saw the arbitrary 
organization of the territory of Missouri by Congress, those 
of Monroe the passage of the Missouri Compromise with its 
Congressional restriction of slavery in the territories, 
unanimously approved by the President and his cabinet.^ 
Under Jackson in 1836 a law was enacted that " no act of the 
territorial legislature, incorporating any banking institution, 
hereafter to be passed, shall have any force or effect whatever, 
until approved or confirmed by Congress," and under this 
law Jackson twice arrested the legislatm-es of Florida and 
Wisconsin. Van Buren's administration saw an act expressly 
retaining for Congress power over the laws of the territory 
of Iowa. Polk signed the act for the organization of the 
territory of Oregon, expressly forbidding slavery therein. 
With all these precedents the Democrats, following after the 
principles of the Dred Scott decision, were entirely out of 
harmony. 2 

^ In 1848 in the Senate Calhoun denied that herTiad approved of the 
Missouri restriction while he had been a member of the Monroe cabinet ; 
the Republicans later gave proof to the contrary. See the Congressional 
Globe, 36 Cong., 1 Sess., Vol. XIV, App., pp. 97 and 106. 

* Buchanan was Polk's Secretary of State. In the Senate, 1860, Pugh 
of Ohio declared that Polk intended to veto the Wilmot Proviso, if that 
measure had passed the two houses of Congress ; his message on the sub- 
ject the President brought to the halls of Congress with him, and on it. 



160 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

Again, on the question of the territorial slavery, the slave- 
holders were leading their party contrary to the estabhshed 
dogmas of the Supreme Court itself as these had been promul- 
gated before the Dred Scott decision. In 1810 this court 
declared: ''The power of governing and legislating for a 
territory is the inevitable consequence of the right to acquire 
and hold territory. Could this position be contested, the 
Constitution declares : ' Congress shall have power to dispose 
of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the 
territory and other property belonging to the United States ' ; 
accordingly we find Congress possessing and exercising the 
absolute and undisputed power of governing and legislating 
for the territory of Orleans." ^ In 1828 the same tribunal 
laid down the following: ''In the meantime Florida con- 
tinues to be a territory of the United States, governed by 
that clause in the constitution which empowers Congress 'to 
make all needful rules and regulations.' Perhaps the power 
of governing a territory belonging to the United States, 
which has not, by becoming a state, acquired the means of 
self-government, may result necessarily from the facts that 
it is not within the jurisdiction of any particular state and 
is within the power and jurisdiction of the United States. 
The right to govern may be the inevitable consequence of 
the right to acquire territory. Whichever may be the 
source whence the power may be derived, the possession of 
it is unquestioned." ^ 

though never an official document, he wrote a memorandum of his in- 
tention, and expressly denied the power of Congress over the territories. 
References on the power of Congress over the territories are, the Corv- 
gressioyial Globe, 36 Cong., 1 Sess., Vol. I, pp. 302, 839; Vol. II, p. 1028^ 
Vol. IV, App., p. 69. It cannot bo said that Congress always exercised 
its power on the side of freedom, for it perpetuated slavery in the 
Western cessions of North Carolina and Georgia, in the territory of] 
Orleans, and in Florida. 

1 Sere vs. Pilot, U. S. Supreme Court Reports, VI Cranch, 331. 

2 The American Insurance Company vs. 356 Bales of Cotton, U. S\ 
Supreme Court Reports, I Peters, 510. See also the Congressional Globt 
36 Cong., 1 Sess., Vol. I, p. 304. 



CAMPAIGN ARGUMENTS 161 

Finally, through their bold aggressions in the interests of 
slavery, the Democrats shattered their former devotion to 
the examples and precepts of "the fathers." The mighty 
party had progressed so far that it could no longer derive 
sanction and authority from its founder, Thomas Jefferson, 
and his compatriots, while, on the contrary, the hostile Re- 
publicans were going to these very sages for both aid and 
comfort. Never a Republican orator omitted reference to 
the strangeness of the spectacle. Douglasites and Brecken- 
ridgeites alike had gone astray. In this connection the 
following campaign document was very effective. 

" 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are 
created equal ; that they are endowed by their Creator with 
certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness.' — Declaration of Independence. 

*' 'I don't care whether slavery is voted up or voted down.' 

— Stephen A. Douglas. 

"'It is among my first wishes to see some plan by which 

slavery may be abolished by law.' — George Washington. 

'' 'I don't care whether slavery is voted up or voted down.' 

— Stephen A. Douglas. 

" 'Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God 
is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever ; that considering 
numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution of the 
wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible 
events; that it may become probable by supernatural in- 
terference; the Almighty has no attribute which can take 
sides with us in such a contest.' — Thomas Jefferson. 

" 'I don't care whether slavery is voted up or voted down.' 

— Stephen A. Douglas. 

"'We have found this evil, slavery, has preyed upon the 
very vitals of the Union, and has been prejudicial to the 
states in which it has existed.' — James Monroe. 

" 'I don't care whether slavery is voted up or voted down.' 

— Stephen A. Douglas. 



162 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

'"Sir, I envy neither the head nor the heart of that man 
from the North who rises here to defend slavery on principle.' 

— John Randolph. 

" 'I don't care whether slavery is voted up or voted down.' 

— Stephen A. Douglas. 

'"So long as God allows the vital current to flow through 
my veins, I will never, never, never, by thought or word, by 
mind or will, aid in admitting one rod of free territory to the 
everlasting curse of human bondage. . . . Neither can I be 
induced by any earthly power to extend slavery over one 
foot of territory now free.' — Henry Clay. 

" 'I don't care whether slavery is voted up, or voted down.' 

— Stephen A. Douglas."^ 

Some radical Southerners openly repudiated ''the fathers" 
and proclaimed their own superior wisdom. Senator Wig- 
fall used the following picturesque words : ''I intend. Sir, to 
answer the twaddle about the fathers. There has been 
enough of that thing talked of. We are wiser than they 
were. We are the old men and they are the young men. 
I care not what their age or experience was. They organized 
this government, and the wisest man in that day could not 
tell how the thing would operate ; it was utterly impossible. 
We have the experience of seventy years. There are men 
now — I do not speak of myself — who have as much edu- 
cation, as much brains as they had. We have seen the 
experiment operating for seventy years. It is twaddle to 
talk about the wisdom of our ancestors, and every man knows 
it. Who is there that, at fifty years of age, would like 
to be bound by his judgment at twenty or twenty-five years ? 
What nation is there that is one hundred years old, thai would 
consent to be governed by the wisdom of the past century? 
What would be said of our arrogance and presumpticn if we 
were to pass a law here now that was not to be repealed for 
one hundred years? . . . They legislated for theinsclves. 

1 The New Haven Daily Palladium, September 10, 186C 



CAMPAIGN ARGUMENTS 163 

We have to legislate for ourselves." Yancey, referring back 
to the Revolution, beHeved that the "old fogies of that day 
entertained opinions in relation to slavery which we of this 
day are unanimously agreed are not sound." ^ 

At the beginning of the presidential campaign positive 
Democratic aggression was patent to all. The party was 
reaching out in every direction for more lands to conquer for 
human slavery, and in assuming this position it was breaking 
with Democratic principles of former days, with the declara- 
tions for freedom of the late forties, the uniform practices of 
Congress for the past half century, Supreme Court declara- 
tions with one important exception, and the advice and 
wisdom of the founders of the Repubhc. An entirely new 
page in the nation's history would be turned if the proposed 
schemes should be enacted into law. But before the end of 
the campaign more portentous aggression loomed over the 
horizon. This was secession from the Union, not yet a gen- 
erally accepted pohcy, but a threat. 

Arguments on the threatened secession abounded. The 
first contention of the Southerners in favor of the step hinged 
about the insidious dangers to slavery that would lurk in a 
Republican administration. Horace Greeley and other Re- 
pubHcans said that they would not touch slavery in the 
states, but would content themselves with attacking it in 
ways which were wholly constitutional ; Southerners, on the 
other hand, beheved that a Republican administration, no 
matter how faithful to the constitution, could not help under- 
mining their institution. Under such a rule at Washington 
the whole fabric of slavocracy's imperialism would totter and 
fall as in a dream ; Cuba, Mexico, and the more Northern of 
the South American states would recede from their grasp, 
the territories in the Western part of the United States 
together with the free Northern states would be forever 

1 The Congressional Globe, 36 Cong., 1 Sess., Vol. II, p. 1657 ; the New 
York Times, November 3, 1860. 



164 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

dedicated to freedom, and new executive vigor would effectu- 
ally curb the reviving slave trade. Freedom would intrench 
itself more firmly by carving out new free states in the West- 
ern country. The Supreme Court and the other courts of the 
United States would pass over to the control of antislavery, 
as vacancy after vacancy gave the new administration op- 
portunities to elevate to the bench the partisans of freedom ; 
there would be no more Dred Scott decisions, the Lemmon 
case would be lost to the South, and on the slave traders the 
extreme penalty of death would be imposed and the sentence 
carried out. Negroes, recognized as citizens, would be 
allowed to take up public land in the West, a privilege pre- 
viously denied them ; in the foreign consulates and embassies 
they would be received and welcomed as citizens and freely 
given passports, another privilege theretofore denied them. 
Skillful use of executive patronage would permeate the 
South, and with the appearance there of Repubhcan post- 
masters and custom house officers an incipient Republican 
party would take root in the very land of slavery ; for the 
temptations of office-holding to Southerners, who notoriously 
loved office, would be irresistible. Rescues of fugitives, gen- 
eral assistance in their favor, and defiances to the national 
fugitive slave law would multiply ; practically no fugitives 
would ever be returned. More John Browns and Hinton 
Rowan Helpers, more attacks on slavery in the Border states, 
would be bound to follow ; for, if these aggressions could hap- 
pen under a Democratic regime, fully devoted to proslavery 
interests, how much more liable would they be with Lincoln 
in the presidential chair, working on the principle that the 
nation was bound to become all free or all slave, and with 
Seward in the Cabinet openly stating that slavery was bound 
to disappear and ought to disappear ! Finally, in further 
plunder of the slaveholders, a high protective tariff would 
be passed by the national Congress, wholly in the interests of 
the North. 



CAMPAIGN ARGUMENTS 165 

Thus would a Republican administration destroy the 
equahty of the South in the Union, and ultimately reduce 
the states of that section to the condition of mere provinces 
of a consohdated despotism, to be governed by a fixed ma- 
jority in Congress hostile to Southern interests and fatally 
bent on the ruin of Southern institutions. To acquiesce in 
such a fate ''would be to emulate the infatuation of the Numid- 
ian king, who dehvered his treasures, his arms, his elephants, 
and his deserters to the Romans and then renewed the war, 
after having needlessly deprived himself of the means of 
defense." ^ "The South will never permit Abraham Lincoln 
to be inaugurated President of the United States," declared a 
Southern writer; ''this is a settled and a sealed fact. It is 
the determination of all parties in the South. Let the con- 
sequences be what they may, whether the Potomac is crim- 
soned in human gore, and Pennsylvania Avenue is paved ten 
fathoms deep with mangled bodies, or whether the last ves- 
tige of Uberty is swept from the face of the American conti- 
nent, the South, the loyal South, the constitutional South, 
will never submit to such humihation and degradation as the 
inauguration of Abraham Lincoln." ^ 

With irresistible fehcity Wilham L. Yancey summed up the 
Southern position at Cooper Institute in New York : "Who 
is more sovereign than the parties that have the reserved 
rights guaranteed to them ? They have made this a govern- 
ment existing on the will of sovereign states, a compact 
between sovereign states, not made states by force, not made 
consolidated masses by the conquering march of a hero, 
with his army at his back and his sword thrown into the scale, 
where the will of the conquered is not consulted. That is 
not our form of government. Ours is a form of government 

1 The view of Hon. W. W. Boyee of South Carolina ; see the New York 
Herald, August 13, 1860. 

^ The New York Times, August 7, 1860, quoting from the Southern 
Confederacy of Atlanta, Georgia. 



166 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

that the people have willed. It is self-government. It is a 
government where the states have willed to make a compact 
with each other; and whenever that compact is violated, 
who is there higher than the states ? Who is more sovereign 
than the parties to the contract, who have the reserved 
rights guaranteed to them? There are rights reserved to 
the states. The constitution itself guarantees them; and 
there is the great right that rises above all, revolution, be- 
cause it is the right of humanity, the right of civilization, 
the right of an intelhgent pubhc opinion, the right of free- 
men, and that is, that when governments become oppressive 
and subversive of the rights for which they were founded, 
then, in the language of our fathers, they have the right to 
form a new government. Governments should not be 
changed for light or transient causes, but whenever the whole 
property of an entire community is swept away by a poHcy 
that undermines it, or deals it a death blow directly ; when 
the social relations of an enUghtened and Christian people 
shall be utterly destroyed by a policy which invidiously 
undermines them, and produces inevitably a contest between 
castes and races ; when these rights are touched upon, and 
the people see that the attack is coming, they will not wait 
until the policy is clenched upon them. The very moment 
their equaUty is destroyed in the government under the 
constitution, then, in my opinion, it becomes the duty of 
the state to protect its people by interposing its reserved 
rights between the acts of the general government and its 
people. And when it does that, if Abraham Lincoln, or any 
other man who aids Abraham Lincoln or any other man in 
the presidential office, shall undertake to use Federal bay- 
onets to coerce a free and sovereign state in this Union 
(I answer that question as an individual because it does not 
involve my state), I shall fly to the standard of that state, 
and give it the best assistance in my power. . . . But, 
gentlemen, this is the time, tliis is the place, this almost the 



CAMPAIGN ARGUMENTS 167 

hour for you to decide — what? That your constitution 
and your government shall not be put to such desperate 
straits. . . . Give us a fair showing. It is all we ask. 
Give us an equal chance with you. It is all we ask. Tram- 
mel not our civilization and our industry with your schemes 
of emancipation, your schemes of abolition, your schemes to 
encourage raids upon us. Give us the showing we give you. 
Hands off ! Meet us in generous rivalry ; and he who con- 
quers in the strife is a conqueror indeed, because the victory 
will be given to him as the just meed of superior sagacity, 
superior intelhgence, and superior virtue; and whenever 
you get to be superior to the South in these things, gentlemen, 
we will bow in reverence before you." ^ 

The property argument for the aggressive step of secession 
was of great weight. In 1850, with a cotton crop of 2,334,000 
bales, 1,590,000 bales were exported; in 1859, with a crop of 
4,019,000 bales, 3,021,000 bales were exported. In the same 
interval home consumption of cotton jumped from 613,- 
000 bales to 928,000 bales. Prices per pound, which in 
the forties were only eight and nine cents, now averaged 
twelve cents. 2 In 1850 in New Orleans good field hands sold 
for from $800 to $1200, early in 1860 for from $2200 to $2500 ; 
the increase in slave values in ten years was one hundred 
per cent. Cotton, therefore, was a very valuable crop, the 
negroes who cultivated it so valuable as to be well-nigh in- 
dispensable. This one source of prosperity was enormous, 
was rapidly increasing, and would continue just as long as 
slavery was secure — no longer. The ordinary instincts 
of business prudence, which aim chiefly at self-preservation 
and grow timid at the least flutter of insecurity and danger, 
could dictate nothing else than getting away from the active 

^ See p. 301 for this speech in full. 

* The Cotton Industry, An Essay in American Economic History, by 
M. B. Hammond. (Publications of the American Economic Association.) 
New York and London, 1897, App. I. 



168 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

source of agitation and trouble. Under the same circum- 
stances every large business interest would embrace secession. 
The four million slaves, said Yancey, were worth, at Virginia 
prices, two bilHon eight hundred million dollars ; the vast 
property demanded to be let alone, and with a RepubHcan 
administration at Washington it would not be let alone. 

The following bombastic sentiments could be dupHcated 
from contemporaneous utterances a hundred times, so com- 
monly held were its sentiments and arguments for secession. 
Cotton was king, and rather than be deprived of it Europe 
would surely rush to its defense and aid secession. ''Is it 
possible, aside from this statistical view of it, to say what 
cotton has done for mankind ? Has any man yet attempted 
to estimate the influence, moral, pohtical, and physical, which 
that delicate and beautiful plant exercises on the destinies 
of man? Silent and unseen, yet all powerful and univer- 
sally pervasive, its influence may not inaptly be compared to 
the light of the sun. ... So, abstract our cotton crop from 
commerce, and behold, if you can, without a shudder of 
horror, the fearful picture. Verily, there would be curses of 
despair on 'Change, and wailings in the palaces of the world's 
merchant princes. Aye, and worse than this, there would 
be wailings in the cabins of the poor, and cries of strong men 
and suffering women and starving children would ascend 
together ; remorseless crime would stalk forth from its dark 
cells, and soon the midnight air would be frozen with the cry 
of ' murder, ' and the stars in the vaults of Heaven would be 
eclipsed in the conflagration of cities whose people were fed 
and clothed with cotton. Great Britain alone is estimated 
to have two million employees in her cotton factories. Add 
to this number those who are dependent on these employees 
for subsistence, and we have by estimation, not less than six 
million souls in the British Empire whose meat and drink 
and clothing and shelter come of this cotton ! It is literally 
their Ufe's blood. Without but one year's supply of cotton 



CAMPAIGN ARGUMENTS 169 

from these factories, and horresco referens f Fancy, if you 
can, this vast multitude of gaunt and desperate men, with 
the lean and bony fingers of famine throtthng their suffering 
wives and helpless babes, rushing through the land and crying 
for bread. Never since the Egyptian mothers tore their hair 
and smote their breasts over the prostrate forms of their first- 
born after the dread visitation of the Angel of Death, has such 
a wail gone up to the throne of God as that which would pour 
into the ears of the British Government. It could not stand 
six months. No, sir; not all the bayonets that won at 
Waterloo; not all the guns that blew up the ramparts at 
Sebastopol, could stop the wild fury of these desperate men, 
with death ahke behind and before them. Where would 
be Liverpool? and where Manchester and her kindred 
cities, whose swarming thousands hterally breathe an atmos- 
phere of cotton? The everlasting clang of their vast ma- 
chinery, the roar of their snorting engines, and the busy hum 
that marks so much industry, would be forever hushed ; the 
stillness of death would reign in the streets, or the silence 
would be fearfully broken by the shouts of a raging and law- 
less mob. Their desolation could not be more complete 
were the plowshare guided over their foundation stones, and 
salt, the emblem of utter barrenness, sown in the blackened 
furrow ! . . . 

''Does any man imagine that I exaggerate the importance 
of cotton and its fabrics ? If so, let him examine the statis- 
tics for himself. Let him examine the British press, and the 
writings of the leading economists on the subject. A learned 
writer in Blackwood's Magazine, referring to this subject, 
says: 'With its increased growth (that is, of cotton), has 
sprung up that mercantile navy, which now waves its stripes 
and stars over every sea, and that foreign influence which 
has placed the internal peace, we may say, the subsistence of 
millions in every manufacturing country in Europe, within 
the power of an ohgarchy of planters.' The London Econo- 



170 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

mist, on the same subject, holds the following language: 
'The hves of nearly two miUions of our countrymen are de- 
pendent on the cotton crops of America ; their destiny may 
be said, without any kind of hyperbole, to hang upon a 
thread. Should any dire calamity befall the land of cotton, a 
thousand of our merchant ships would rot idly at dock ; ten 
thousand mills must stop their busy looms ; ten thousand 
mouths would starve from lack of food to feed them ! ' " i 
The same rehance on King Cotton, the same hopes, were 
staked on its influence in the Northern states. Continuing, 
the speaker last quoted said: ''In the United States the 
effect would only be less dreadful, because we have greater 
resources for feeding our more widely spread population, and 
because there are fewer of our people engaged in manufac- 
turing. But no sane man can doubt that it would be frightful 
to contemplate. If a Httle temporary derangement of our 
financial condition could produce such distress and terror 
throughout the land as was witnessed through the pressure of 
1857, what would be the effects were this four milHon, five 
hundred thousand bales of cotton, forming two-thirds of all 
that we export to foreign countries, suddenly to fail us? 
Grass would grow in the streets of many a lovely New 
England village; and many a haughty trader, who now 
dwells in a marble palace, would come down to the dust of 
poverty and humihation, dragging with him all that was 
lovely and dehcate in his household. The source of three- 
fifths of all your wealth and prosperity being gone, the strikes 
which now disturb your business and alarm your capitahsts 
would be tinged with revolution and stained with blood. 
The misery and suffering which would sweep through the 
land, with all their attendant evils, would be such as make 
you regard your Lawrence tragedies ^ and present social 

iThe Congressional Globe, 36 Cong., 1 Sess., Vol. II, p. 1160-1161. 
This is from a speech by Vance of North Carolina. 

2 The fall of the Pemberton mills of Lawrence, Massachusetts, is here 
referred to ; many operatives were killed. 



CAMPAIGN ARGUMENTS 171 

difficulties as indeed but a merciful visitation. The imperial 
city of New York would be shaken to the center. Not only 
the great traffic in cotton, but her entire trade with the South, 
would be cut off. We could not trade there ; for without our 
cotton we would have httle to trade with. Many a great 
mercantile house would be closed, and the names of its part- 
ners paraded in the hsts of bankruptcy. Great clipper ships 
would rot at their wharves and the worm of decay would eat 
into their timbers, for lack of that cotton and its fabrics, with 
which their holds were once so richly freighted. The white 
sails of our vast merchant marine, equal to any in the world, 
would no longer 'float in every breeze under the whole 
heavens,' but general ruin and dismay would pervade all 
ranks and classes of men." 

The North and all Europe, said another, were more inter- 
ested than the South that the cotton crop should be suppUed 
uninterruptedly. Entrenched behind the universal want 
of the civilized world, the South was holding all countries 
under bond to keep the peace. Neither the Northern states 
nor Europe dared disregard cotton ; nay ! Europe did not 
dare to permit the North to disregard it. 

The high tariff, to which the North was committed, con- 
stituted another secession argument. England, as the 
great manufacturing and trading rival of the Northern 
states, would avail itself of the offer of free trade in a new 
Southern Confederacy, go in there, win that market away 
from the Northern states, and protect it. Secession and 
free trade would give the Enghsh manufacturers a chance to 
crush the Yankee competitors. 

In an independent Southern RepubUc the patent laws of 
the United States could be broken and patents stolen with 
impunity; debts due the hated Northerners could be 
repudiated.^ 

> The New York Times, October 30, 1860, quotes the Charleston Mer- 
cury at length on this point. 



172 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

The Northwestern states, which were more closely iden- 
tified with the South than with the North, would follow the 
South into secession, for the magnificent river that flowed 
through their hmits joined the two sections, the Northwest 
and the South, in stronger bonds of unity than could pos- 
sibly be established between the East and the West by the 
''mere hooks of steel," — the railroads. 

Contrariwise, there were Southern arguments against 
secession. That which would now seem the strongest 
argument against the movement, namely, the expense, the 
extra taxation involved, seems scarcely to have been con- 
sidered. A careful search of the Southern press nowhere 
reveals that the point was emphasized, for it is found in only 
scattered references.^ Doubtless the great determination 
of the slaveholders, their passionate excitement, then- pros- 
perity and their rehance on King Cotton for speedy foreign 
aid, would in part explain this unexpected turn. Some were 
deterred by the expected certainty of a servile insurrection 
after secession. The only consideration that at any moment 
prevented such an uprising was the behef of the negroes that 
the whole power of the central government would be brought 
to bear against them. "Fancy four million blacks, with 
their tropical blood, intermixed with the more nervous blood 
of their masters, boihng in theu- veins, with the memory of 
a Hfetime of oppression urging them on, maddened by the 
desire for gratification of their long-smothered revenge, and 
with the full consciousness that they must triumph or meet a 
fate far worse than death, — fancy these men, animated by 

1 This observation applies only to the period of the presidential cam- 
paign; later in the controversy, the fear of taxation may have loomed 
larger in the South. One difficulty as to internal taxation in the South 
was pointed out, the struggle that would inevitably ensue between the 
mountainous antislavery sections and the proslavery seaboard sections 
on the subject of taxation of slaves. This was already a burning ques- 
tion in the local politics of Virginia and North Carolina. It was ex- 
pected that this controversy would wax warmer after secession. 



CAMPAIGN ARGUMENTS 173 

this spirit, engaged in a life or death struggle with the whites 
of the South, and you have a picture of what must occur in 
every Southern state if they resolve to destroy the only 
safeguard which they now have — the Union of the states." ^ 

Secession would be unwise, it was urged in other quarters, 
in so far as it would increase the antislavery spirit of the 
North and cause the Northern supporters of the South to 
disappear. It was urged, too, that there was an element 
of impracticability in such a movement, because one seces- 
sion involved others; from the proposed Southern Con- 
federacy itself, first one state might withdraw, then another 
and another, until but one was left. From what could that 
single state withdraw? Only confusion, eternal bickerings 
between states, could result.^ What right to secede from 
the Union had Florida and Louisiana, purchased and brought 
into the Union by the common treasure? What right had 
Texas, bought with the blood of the soldiers of all the 
Union ? 

The question as to when and how to carry secession into 
effect was often considered ; should it be precipitated after 
the election of Lincoln, after his inauguration, or after some 
overt act of hostiUty to the South by his administration? 
What constituted an overt act? and how should secession 
be accomplished, — by one state after another, by a number 
of states acting together, or by a convention of them all ? It 
came commonly to be agreed that the affronted states should 
effect secession while Buchanan was still in office, for it was 
believed that as President he would not raise his hand in 
opposition, whereas it was feared that Lincoln would offer 
strenuous opposition.^ 

iThe New York Herald, August 1, 1860, quoting from the Chicago 
Democrat. 

* This idea was drawn from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson, 
January 1, 1796. 

3 This sentiment as to President Buchanan was repeatedly expressed 
in the South. 



174 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

The attitude of the four political parties on the subject of 
secession may easily be traced. 

No party, North or South, either through its platform or 
through the utterances of its candidates, openly avowed 
secession ; but in the South, the home of disruption, where 
out of three political parties, two were openly and aggres- 
sively for the Union, one at least was lukewarm in its union 
professions. This was the Breckenridge Democracy, and 
its candidate may speak for himself. 

"All over the country the charge of disunion is made 
against me by anonymous writers and wandering orators. 
Their whole stock in trade is 'disunion, disunion.' Their 
continual cry is that this man and his party are attempting 
to break up the Union of the states. We say, how can prin- 
ciples be sectional or disunionist which are based strictly 
upon the constitution ? And the large number of young 
gentlemen who are ringing bells, ^ with tongues as long and 
heads as empty as the bells which they are ringing, cry 
'disunion, disunion.' From sources yet more eminent comes 
the information that I and the political organization with 
which I am connected, are laboring for a disruption of the 
Confederacy. I do not reply now to what Mr. Douglas 
says all over New England, in Virginia, and wherever he 
goes, because it is quite natural for a gentleman as much 
interested as he to think that any man who opposes his 
principles must be a disunionist. Indeed, by his decla- 
rations we must all be disunionists in Kentucky, for he 
declares that those who assert that territorial legislatures 
have no power to exclude slave property, and that Congress 
should interfere for its protection, are disunionists, and that 

1 This is a sarcastic reference to the fact that the supporters of Bell 
and Everett took to ringing bells as a campaign demonstration. This was 
common among the Bell men both in the North and in the South. In 
New York State, where the Bell and Everett party, by fusion, sold out 
to the two Democratic factions, Republicans followed the Bell and Everett 
processions, ringing bells and crying "Auction, auction!" 



CAMPAIGN ARGUMENTS 175 

is what the whole legislature of Kentucky said last year. In 
my own state, where, I trust, my character and antecedents 
are known, one of the oldest and most eminent of our pubUc 
men has not said that I was a disunionist, but has intimated 
that I am connected with an organization whose bone and 
body are disunion. . . . The man does not hve who has 
power to couple my name successfully with the sHghtest 
taint of disloyalty to the constitution and the Union. . . . 
Now, if it be true that I am not a disunionist, and if it be 
true that the pohtical principles I advocate are not dis- 
unionist principles, but the principles of the constitution, is 
it not rather hard to estabhsh disunion on sound men with 
constitutional principles? That, gentlemen, would seem 
to exhaust the subject, — sound men with constitutional 
principles, which principles I have announced in the form 
recognized in American poUtics, to be asserted by means of 
the ballot box." ^ 

The ardent Union parties of the South, the Bell-Everetts 
and the Douglasites, after these pusillanimous words, which 
were all that the candidate dared to speak m answer to defi- 
nite questions as to how he stood on the subjects of secession 
Bnd Federal coercion of states, ^ gave themselves no rest ; 
theu" cue was to force the Breckemidgeites out into the open 
and convict them of their true secessionist sentiment, and 
they gave themselves to the attack with unwonted vehe- 
mence. Secession was hurled at the Southern Democracy from 
every side. Candidate Breckenridge's sentiments were vague 
and hollow ; they did not glow with frank love of the Union ; 
the speaker hedged. He who was not openly and ardently 
for the Union, was against it. Moreover, hot-headed, out- 
and-out secessionists in every Southern state belonged to the 

1 The New York Herald, September 6, 1860. This paper here gives in 
full one of the very few political speeches Breckenridge delivered in the 
campaign. The place was Lexington, Kentucky, Breckenridge's home. 

2 See pp. 180-181. 



176 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

Breckenridge party, and to their words, always in evidence, 
appeal was made. 

Several sensational documents revealed Yancey's position 
with merciless precision. That great leader, the soul of the 
Breckenridge party, questioned by many a Northern audi- 
ence in the height of the campaign, persistently refused to 
tell in the crisis, one way or the other, what were his senti- 
ments as regarded secession ; it was a question for his state 
to decide after the election, and he would go with his state. ^ 
But in the months immediately preceding the presidential 
campaign he had often expressed himself on the subject 
in words as eloquent as any campaign speech, and news- 
paper readers came to know the record by heart, so often 
was it laid before them by the hostile press. 

Welcoming the Southern commercial convention in Mont- 
gomery, Alabama, May, 1858, he used the following words : 
"I must be allowed, at least on my behalf, to welcome you, 
too, as but the foreshadowing of that far more important 
body, important as you evidently will be, that, if injustice 
and wrong shall continue to rule the councils of the domi- 
nant section of the country, must, ere long, assemble on 
Southern soil, for the purpose of devising some measure by 
which not only your industrial, but your social and political 
relations, shall be placed on the basis of an independent 
sovereignty, which will have within itself a unity of climate, 
a unity of soil, a unity of production, and a unity of social 
relation; that unity which alone can be the basis of a suc- 
cessful and permanent government." Within a month's time 
he wrote to James S. Slaughter in regard to prompt resist- 
ance to the next Northern aggression: ''It must come in 
the nature of things. No national party can save us; 
no sectional party can even do it, but if we could do as our 

1 See his words in New York, pp. 322-328. In this speech, he did allow 
himself to declare against coercion of a state by the national government 
to prevent secession. For the answer in Baltimore, see p. 215. 



CAMPAIGN ARGUMENTS 177 

fathers did, organize committees of safety all over the 
Southern states, and it is only in them that we can hope for 
any effective movement, we shall fire the Southern heart, 
instruct the Southern mind, give courage to each other, and 
at the proper moment, by one organized concerted action, 
we can precipitate the cotton states into a revolution." In 
Montgomery, Alabama, a few weeks later, he organized a 
lodge of the ''League of the United Southerners," in the 
preamble of whose constitution ran these words: "And 
believing fiu-ther that it is the duty of the South to use all 
proper means to sustain her rights within the Union, with a 
view to being justified before the world in resuming the 
powers she has delegated to the general government, in 
the event she fails to obtain justice in the Union, we organ- 
ize ourselves under the following constitution." The motto 
of the society, of which numerous branches were formed, 
was "A Southern Repubhc is our only safety." A month 
or so later, explanatory of the Slaughter letter, he wrote 
to Roger A. Pryor, an editor of Richmond, Virginia, and 
later fire-eating member of the national House of Repre- 
sentatives : "It is equally true that I do not expect Virginia 
to take any initiative steps toward a dissolution of the 
Union, when that exigency shall be forced upon the South. 
Her position as a Border state and a well-considered Southern 
policy (a pohcy which has been digested and understood 
and approved by the ablest men in Virginia, as you yourself 
must be aware), would seem to demand that when such a 
movement takes place, by any considerable number of the 
Southern states, Virginia and the other Border states should 
remain in the Union, where by theii' position and their 
counsels, they could prove more effective friends than by 
moving out of the Union, and thus giving the Southern 
Confederacy a long abolition hostile border to watch. In 
the event of the movement being successful, in time Virginia 
and the other states that desired it, could join the Southern 



178 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

Confederacy and be protected by the power of its affirm- 
ance and its diplomacy." 

''We shall fire the Southern heart, instruct the Southern 
mind, give courage to each other, and at the proper moment, 
by one organized concerted action, we can precipitate the cotton 
states into a revolution.'' These eloquent, damning words 
of Yancey would not down ; they were never denied ; and 
by the common consent of the nation, they were associated 
with the Breckemidge party, as its very heart and soul.^ 

A leading Bell-Everett speaker named a list of twenty-six 
leading pubhc men in the South, including members of the 
United States Senate, the United States House of Repre- 
sentatives, governors of states and ex-governors, all of them 
Breckenridge men and all openly in favor of disunion 
if Lincoln were elected. In this list were the Hon. Jefferson 
Davis of Mississippi, the Hon. L. M. Keitt of South Caro- 
lina, the Hon. Mr. Curry of Alabama, the Hon. J. T. , 
Morgan of Alabama, the Hon. J. L. Orr of South CaroUna, •] 
the Hon. R. B. Rhett of South CaroUna, the Hon. William J 
L. Yancey of Alabama, Governor J. J. Pettus of Alabama, : : 
Ex-Governor McRae of Florida, Governor Perry of Florida, 
Ex-Governor McWilhe of Mississippi, the Hon. Reuben 
Davis of Mississippi, the Hon. Roger A. Pryor of Virginia, 
Governor Gist of South Carohna, and the Hon. Mr. Boyce 
of South Carolina.' 

These attacks on Breckenridge by the Southern Unionists 
were accompanied by definitely formulated announcements 
of a different pohcy. 

1 For the above quotations and many others, see the Newbern Daily 
Progress, Newbern, North Carolina, August 16, 1860, and the Memphis 
Daily Appeal, July 19, 1860. At Charleston, on the evening of the seces- 
sion of the Alabama delegation, addressing crowds in the street, Yancey 
said: "Perhaps even now the pen of the historian was nibbed to write 
the story of a now revolution," at which three cheers for a new Southern 
Republic were proposed and given with a will. 

2 See the Bell-Everett attack of Brownlow on the secession of the 
Breckenridge party, pp. 336-340. 



CAMPAIGN ARGUMENTS 179 

Bell's adhesion to the Union was accompanied by an 
appeal to moderation and compromise, which were 'Hhe 
characteristics of the constitution itself." His words of 
former days were spread broadcast. ''The middle or 
moderate party," he said in Congress in 1832, in discussing 
the tariff of that year, "is never in much esteem with the 
extremes of either side, but it has always found its support 
in the good sense and moderation of the great body of the 
people." In 1835 in a speech in Nashville he said: ''As 
long as moderation and the spirit of conciliation shall preside 
over the administration of the Federal government, any 
faction which shall seek to divide the Union, either by rous- 
ing a sense of injustice and inequality in the action of the 
government in one section, or by seizing upon the delicate 
and inflanmiable question of slavery in the other, can always 
be shorn of its strength and defeated of its purpose, without 
the shghtest convulsive sensation in our system. . . . The 
real danger to our system, as in every other system of free 
government, is in violent party action of the government. 
A proscribed and disregarded minority, respectable for its 
numbers, its talents, and even for the virtues of many of 
its members — for violence is never the exclusive attitude of 
any one party — such a minority is always tempted in re- 
sentment for its real or imaginary wrongs, in redress for its 
violated privileges as American citizens, in being deprived 
of all participation in the government, compelled to obey 
laws and be the subjects of a pohcy prescribed and directed 
exclusively by their opponents, such a minority, I repeat, is 
constantly tempted to seize upon every vexed and irritating 
question, to make common cause with the spirit of fanat- 
icism itself, in an effort to right, or at all events, to avenge, 
their injuries. This is the danger of our system." ^ 

1 The National Intelligencer, September 20, 1860 ; here is published a 
campaign tract of the Bell-Everett party, and the sentiments, copied in 
the text above and taken from this tract, represent, therefore, the position 
of the party in the crisis of 1860. 



180 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

Sometimes the Bell men grew violent and forsook their 
moderation. Before an excited crowd in Knoxville, Tennes- 
see, where Yancey was defending his principles, W. G. 
Brownlow and four other Bell supporters asked the speaker 
what he would do if Lincoln were elected, and Yancey re- 
sponded by another question : ''Who are you in favor of 
for President?" The Bell men admitted their allegiance 
and Brownlow, as their spokesman, declared: "When the 
secessionists go to Washington to dethrone Lincoln, I am 
for seizing a bayonet and forming an army to resist such an 
attack, and they shall walk over my dead body on their 
way." Yancey replied that he would not individually 
secede but would follow his state. ''If my state resists, I 
shall go with her, and if I meet this gentleman (pointing to 
Brownlow), marshalled with his bayonet to oppose us, 
I'll plunge my bayonet to the hilt through and through his 
heart, and feel no compunction for the act, and thank my 
God that my country has been freed from such a foe. This 
man, forgetful of his nativity, has uttered fratricidal senti- 
ments of hostility toward the men of the South, who differ 
from him upon their view of their rights, and the time and 
the manner in which they should be asserted and supported, 
but who, if they err in judgment, err on the side of patriotism 
and through their devotion to their native land." ^ 

Douglas' program of unionism, which was much more 
positive than that of Bell, culminated at Norfolk, Virginia, 
where the head of the Breckenridge ticket handed Douglas 
a paper with two questions on it. The first question ran : 
"If Abraham Lincoln be elected president of the United 
States, will the Southern states be justified in seceding from 
the Union?" "To this I answer emphatically, no. The 
election of a man to the presidency by the American people, 
in conformity to the constitution of the United States, 
would not justify any attempt at dissolving this glorious 

1 The New York Times, September 29, 1860. 



CAMPAIGN ARGUMENTS 181 

confederation. Now I will read to you the second question 
and answer it. 'If they, the Southern states, seceded from 
the Union upon the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln, 
before he commits an overt act against their constitutional 
rights, will you advise or vindicate resistance by force to 
their secession ? ' (Voices of Bell men were heard crying ' No, 
no, Douglas.') I answer emphatically that it is the duty of 
the President of the United States, and all others in authority 
under him, to enforce the laws of the United States as passed 
by Congress and as the courts expound them. And I, as 
in duty bound by my oath of fidehty to the constitution, 
would do all in my power to aid the government of the 
United States in maintaining the supremacy of the laws 
against all resistance to them, come from what quarter it 
might. In other words, I think the President of the United 
States, whoever he may be, should treat all attempts to 
break up the Union, by resistance to its laws, as Old Hickory 
treated the nulhfiers in 1832. The laws must be enforced, 
but at the same time be it remembered, it is the duty of 
every citizen of every State, and every other functionary, 
to preserve, maintain, and vindicate the rights of every citi- 
zen and the rights of every state in the Union. I hold that 
the constitution has a remedy for every grievance that may 
arise within the limits of the Union." Yet he believed in 
the right of revolution against an oppressive government; 
the President of the United States he would ''hang higher 
than Haman" if he transcended his power. "I am for 
putting down the Northern abolitionists but am also for 
putting down the Southern secessionists, and that too by an 
exercise of the same constitutional power. I believe that 
the peace, harmony, and safety of this country depend upon 
destroying both factions. ^ 

1 The New York Herald, August 27, 1860. For the answer at Raleigh, 
North Carolina, to the same questions, see pp. 294-296. For Yancey's 
answers, see pp. 322-328. 



182 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

These words are of refreshing frankness compared with 
the craven position of candidate Breckenridge on the same 
subject,^ or the milk and water utterances of candidate BeU.^ 
Yet, on the moraUty of slavery, Douglas was the one who 
hedged.^ 

At Baltimore, Douglas delivered the following words: 
''Nor can they screen themselves under the pretext that 
this would be making war on sovereign states. Sovereign 
states cannot commit treason — individuals may. . . . 
When a citizen of Vermont arrays himself against the con- 
stitution and the laws by resisting the marshal in the execu- 
tion of the fugitive slave law, we do not allow the violator 
to screen himself under the sovereignty of Vermont, but we 
punish the violators of the law wherever we find them. . . . 
Secession means revolution. It is only another word for 
the same meaning. I hold to the inherent right of revolu- 
tion, whenever the evils of civil war and revolution are less 
than those of obedience to law. It is upon that principle 
only that Washington, Jefferson, Frankhn, and Adams justi- 
fied their conduct in seceding from the British Empire. 
When they seceded they did not skulk behind the pretended 
sovereignty of the colonies. They avowed that the evils 
of resistance were less than those of submission. They 
looked the gallows in the face, and hke brave men dared all 
the consequences of their acts, though the halter awaited 
their necks had they failed." ^ 

Douglas believed that his own section of the Northwest 
would never countenance secession. "You go into one of 
our new settlements in Kansas, Nebraska, Illinois, or any 
of them, and there you will find that a North Carolinian 
has settled down by the side of a Connecticut farmer, with 
a Virginian next to him, a New Yorker, a South Carolinian 

1 See pp. 174-175. « See p. 179. => See p. 184. 

* The Newbern Daily Progress, Newbern, North Carolina, September 
14, 1860. 



CAMPAIGN ARGUMENTS 183 

and representatives of every state around him, the whole 
union being represented on the prairie by the farmers who 
have settled on it. In the course of time the young folks in 
the community begin to visit, and in a short time a North 
CaroHnian boy sees a Yankee girl he likes, and his prejudices 
against her people begin to soften. In a few years, the 
Carolina and the Connecticut people are united, the Vir- 
ginian and the Pennsylvanian, the Yankee and the slave- 
holder, are united by the ties of marriage, and friendship 
and social intercourse; and when their children grow up, 
the child of the same parents has a grandfather in North 
Carolina and another in Vermont ; and that child does not 
like to hear either of those states abused ; . . . and he will 
never consent that this union shall be dissolved, so that he 
will be compelled to obtain a passport and get it visaed to 
enter a foreign land to visit the graves of his ancestors. . . . 
Do you think that a citizen of IlHnois will ever consent to 
pay duties at the custom house when he ships his corn down 
the Mississippi to supply the people there? Never on 
earth. We shall say to the custom house gate-keepers that 
we furnish the water that makes the great river, and we will 
follow it throughout its whole course to the ocean, no matter 
who or what may stand before us." ^ 

The opportunity to take this strong Union stand, Douglas 
certainly welcomed. Yet as is often the case with patriots, 
patriotism now "paid." As early as the Charleston con- 
vention it had been observed that a certain amount of 
secession sentiment in the South would benefit Douglas in 
the North without hurting him in the South. It would 
enable him to appeal to Union sentiment in every state 
against hated traitors, and would afford him a new issue to 
talk about, to him who of all candidates needed it. His 
"gur-reat pur-rinciple " of popular sovereignty was getting 

1 The Newbern Daily Progress, Newbern, North Carolina, September 5, 
1860 ; from a speech by Douglas at Raleigh, North Carolina. 



184 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

to be an old story ; people had heard enough of it ; and yet 
he was not fit to discuss before either Southern or Northern 
audiences the subject of slavery. The very logic of popular 
sovereignty demanded that he be neutral here; necessarily 
"I don't care whether slavery is voted up or voted down" 
became his position. In the midst of the greatest moral 
upheaval of his country's history, he stood almost alone as 
the only pubhc man who did not and would not commit 
himself on the issue of the right or wrong of African slavery. 
If on the stump he was asked point blank as to his slavery 
professions, he bluffed and abused his inquirer and never 
answered. In a small town in Ohio the previous year, when 
an old man asked him the fatal question, Douglas proceeded 
to descant on popular sovereignty; "You are not answering 
my question, Mr. Douglas ; I know all about that ; but what 
is your opinion — is slavery a moral or political evil?" 
''You may thank me that I do not rebuke you for your 
impertinence," shouted Douglas in confusion, while the 
friendly and excited audience quickly completed the ques- 
tioner's discomfiture. Practically the same incident was 
repeated the next year at Bangor, Maine. 

But over and over again Douglas repeated his Union pro- 
fessions, and challenged Breckenridge to come out and 
answer in turn the Norfolk questions on secession and 
coercion. These questions had already been propounded 
and Douglas' instantaneous and courageous reply recorded 
before Breckenridge arose to deliver his Lexington speech. 
But, as all recognized, Breckenridge could not display an 
ardent attachment to the Union and at the same time head 
his ticket. His position was delicate. If he stood forth too 
prominently for the Union, and favored coercion of seceding 
states by the Washington government, he would offend tlie 
radical secessionists of the extreme South ; on the other 
hand, if he openly embraced secession, he would injure his 
cause in the Border states. Answer Douglas, therefore, he 



CAMPAIGN ARGUMENTS 185 

could not, and to cover his position he and his party tried 
to turn the tables and to reveal secession among the Southern 
Douglasites. 

This Breckenridge retaliation upon Douglas met with 
some success, for many Southerners, loyal to Douglas in 
this campaign of 1860, had uncomfortable records in past 
secession movements to be brought to hght. Said the 
Douglas vice presidential candidate, Herschel V. Johnson, 
as the Governor of Georgia in 1856, to the legislature of 
the state: ''I therefore recommend you to provide by law 
for the calhng of a state convention, in the event of the 
rejection of Kansas" ; he then beheved that disunion was at 
hand and he was friendly to the movement. ' ' The election of 
Fremont," wrote Johnson in 1856, ''must drive the Southern 
states to dissolution." Governor Robert C. Wickliffe of 
Louisiana, who helped at Baltimore to make the Douglas 
platform, as the Governor of his state had sent a secessionist 
message to his legislature. Ex-Governor Winston of Ala- 
bama, a Douglas elector, in 1857 wrote to his legislature : 
"We have everything to gain and nothing to lose by dis- 
rupting every tie that binds us to the Confederacy." Pierre 
Soule, an ardent Douglas man of Louisiana, was ardent for 
secession in 1850. J. P. Hambleton, the editor of the 
Atlanta Confederacy, strong for Douglas, was red-hot for 
secession and war. Alexander H. Stephens, Douglas elector 
in Georgia, in Congress said : ''Whenever the government is 
brought in hostile array against me and mine, I am for dis- 
union, openly, boldly, fearlessly, for revolution. When 
that day comes, if ever it does, 'down with the government' 
will be my motto and watchword." Miles Taylor of Louis- 
iana, the chairman of the Douglas national committee, in an 
address to the people of the United States, said: "Thank 
God, no disunionists support Douglas and Johnson," but as a 
member of Congress he had openly spoken disunion senti- 
ments. Breckemidge papers, issue after issue, kept up 



186 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

the merciless exposure, while they sanctimoniously clothed 
themselves in the garments of Unionism. The charge was 
even circulated that Douglas had invited Yancey to become 
his running mate on the ticket as candidate for the vice 
presidency.^ 

The Breckenridge retort to Bell may almost be anticipated, 
for it centered about the non-committal attitude of the Con- 
stitutional Union Party on the great questions of the day. 
Bell's platform, which called merely for "the constitution of 
the country, the union of the states, and the enforcement of 
the laws" as the only true political principles, was too short 
and indefinite. Whose interpretation of the constitution was 
meant, that of Washington and Madison, of Calhoun, Yancey 
and Taney, or of Douglas ? What laws would be enforced, 
those of freedom or those of slavery ? The conflict of opin- 
ion could not be settled by ignoring it. As well advise the 
tempest to be calm as to attempt to mollify an aroused com- 
munity into abandoning claims which it believed to be just 
and essential to its welfare. No real vital beliefs on slavery, 
the great question of the day, could be found in the record 
of either Bell or Everett ; from the very necessities of their 
position they were straddlers. If asked to specify his opin- 
ions, either with great propriety could reply in words attrib- 
uted to Sir Robert Peel: ''When that question is made to 
me in a proper time, in a proper place, under proper quaUfica- 
tions, and with proper motives, I will hesitate long before I 
will refuse to take it into consideration." ^ 

Could a party whose leaders refused to commit them- 
selves definitely on slavery, be trusted in its professions of 
Unionism ? In Congress Bell had been on every side of the 



' For all of the quotations given here and very many more, see the 
Western Kentucky Yeoman, September 28, 1860. While the Brecken- 
ridgeites here and there may have ques*^ioned Douglas' devotion to 
slavery, this attack on Douglas was not a prominent one. 

- See pp. 256-257 for Carl Schurz's treatment of Bell. 



CAMPAIGN ARGUMENTS 187 

slavery question. He identified himself with Slade and 
John Quincy Adams in favor of the abolition petitions of 
the thirties and the forties, opposed House rule 21, which 
forbade the reception by the House of petitions to abolish 
slavery in the District of Columbia, in the states or in the 
territories, and he opposed the annexation of Texas and the 
ensuing Mexican war; during the debates on the compro- 
mise measures of 1850 he turned and fought the Wilmot 
Proviso principle and praised slavery; turning again, he 
fought the Kansas-Nebraska measures, and finally ended 
by being mentioned at the Republican convention at Chicago 
as a suitable Republican candidate for the presidency. 

Now in his presidential campaign. Bell allowed his South- 
ern supporters to praise slavery and to proclaim far and wide 
extracts from his utterances, carefully selected from the 
proslavery portion of his record. At the same time, his 
Northern supporters in Massachusetts, the home of Everett, 
the vice presidential candidate, stoutly denied any sympathy 
or connection with slavery. To this position was the party 
finally reduced, supporting slavery in one section and deny- 
ing that support in the other. Gradually the antislavery 
record of Everett was developed, how in the thirties he had 
subscribed to the statement that ''slavery was a social, 
pohtical, and moral evil" and had never retracted; how he 
had approved the main Hne of Charles Sumner's speech 
for which the proslavery Brooks had assaulted the Senator, 
and how finally, in his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 
he sent his children to the public schools, where negroes were 
admitted. This revelation of the record of Bell and Everett 
on slavery, and the two-faced nature of their campaign, was 
rehed upon to counteract and weaken their Union appeal. 

By the Republicans, secession was seldom made an issue ; 
they ridiculed the Southern braggadocio, joked about it, 
but almost never took it up in earnest debate. This doubt- 
less proceeded from deliberate purpose, for had the univer- 



188 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

sally recognized predominant party, surely destined to win 
the election, opposed the Southerners argument for argument 
on this point, then inevitably in self-defense the Southerners 
would have stiffened in then* position, and secession would 
have been rendered still more certain. Such a campaign 
by the Republicans would also have served to frighten their 
own supporters, many of whom would consider long before 
casting a ballot for Lincoln if persuaded that that ballot 
would hasten secession and civil war. Surely thousands of 
Republican votes were cast without the least expectation 
that war would result. Up to the election, a serious Repub- 
lican argument against disruption can scarcely be found. A 
few hot-heads in Congress, under provocation, proclaimed 
that they would coerce the disunionists into remaining in 
the Union ; a campaign speaker now and then mentioned the 
subject ; a few said (to employ a phrase later used by Horace 
Greeley in this connection), "Let the erring sisters go in 
peace." But that is all. 

To Mayor John Wentworth of Chicago, as to thousands 
of others, the cry of secession was but 'Hhe old game of 
scaring and bullying the North into submission to Southern 
demands and Southern tyranny." ^ ''It reminds me of the 
story of the doctor," said a Congressman on the floor of the 
House of Representatives at Washington; "a quack doctor 
was called to see a man who was attacked with some sort of 
disease or other, I do not know what, and the doctor did not 
know either ; but he told his patient that he would give him 
a certain medicine that would throw him into fits, and he 
said that he was 'Hell on fits.' So with these Democratic 
pohticians before a presidential election. They always try 
to give the country some sort of medicine that will throw it 
into fits. They are 'Hell on fits.' They are now at work 
trying to throw the country into fits, and they are succeed- 
ing pretty well." Senator Hale of New Hampshire told the 

1 The New York Herald, August 1, 1860. 



CAMPAIGN ARGUMENTS 189 

story of a division in a Connecticut church, with one deacon 
on one side and one on the other. The preacher preached 
harmony and all were moved. Full of emotion Deacon Jones 
went to Deacon Snow. "Deacon Snow, we must have 
union." ''Good," said Deacon Snow, ''we must." "Well," 
continued the former, "there is but one way to get it, Deacon 
Snow." " Brother, what is it ? " "Well, you must give in, 
for I cannot." This was exactly the attitude of the South. 
There were irreconcilable differences of opinion between the 
two sections and the South said, "You must give in, for we 
cannot ; you are used to it and we are not." ^ 

Snapping his fingers in scorn at the slaveholders, Seward 
shouted, at St. Paul, Minnesota: "For the first time in the 
history of the Republic the slave power has not even the 
power to terrify or alarm the freeman, so as to make him 
submit, and scheme, and coincide, and compromise. It 
rails now with a feeble voice, as it thundered in our ears for 
twenty or thirty years past. With a feeble and muttering 
voice they cry out that they will tear the Union to pieces. 
(Derisive laughter.) Who's afraid? (Laughter and cries 
of "no one.") They complain that if we do not surrender 
our principles, and our system, and our right, being a ma- 
jority, to rule, and if we will not accept their system and such 
rules as they will give us, they will go out of the Union. 
Who's afraid ? (Laughter.) Nobody's afraid ; nobody can 
be bought." ^ 

After secession was an accomplished fact, the North took 
up the subject seriously and for the first time debated its 
constitutional aspects.^ 

1 See Carl Schurz's humorous treatment in New York of practically the 
same subject, pp. 270-271. 

2 The New York Herald, October 18, 1860. 

^ In the South the constitutional aspects of secession were a matter of 
debate in the Bell-Everett and Breckenridge campaign ; but this debate 
did not become general in the nation till the RepubUcans took it up after 
secession was an accomplished fact. 



190 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

The aggressions of the slaveholders, which have now 
been passed in review, seemed a never ending theme 
in popular discussion. All were famihar with the indict- 
ment. The last count, secession, was of the most imme- 
diate importance in the campaign, although the others 
were not forgotten, territorial aggrandizement, aimed at 
peaceful neighboring nations, at the newly organized terri- 
tories, and at the freedom of the Northern free states, insist- 
ent demands for a legalized foreign slave trade, renuncia- 
tion of professions of freedom made in past years, departure 
from the previous practices of the government, the new 
attitude of the Supreme Court, and sliipwreck of the party 
traditions of loyalty to 'Hhe fathers." 

But the opponents of the slaveholders were not behind 
in taking a new and aggressive position ; and the very exist- 
ence of the Republican party, built up in six short years out 
of the conscious desire of a multitude of people to destroy 
slavery, is proof of the charge. 

The grounds for this incontrovertible statement cannot 
be found in the formal declarations of the platform of the 
Repubhcan party, for that document was piously worded 
to disclaim any intended attack on state institutions; as 
Uttle may it be found in the cunning strategy of the majority 
of campaign orators, for these planted themselves squarely 
on their platform in conceahng their real intentions. The 
record of daily events disclosed Republican policy. North- 
ern newspapers embodied it, and not the party platforms; 
the spontaneous words and acts of individual men in their 
actual contact with slavery, and not the deceptive utter- 
ances of the politicians. An enumeration of the leading 
factors involved in the popular discussion readily suggests 
itself; the John Brown raid and the stupendous wave of 
enthusiastic approval called forth in countless ways by that 
event ; Hinton Rowan Helper's Impending Crisis and the 
ensuing struggle over the speakership in the House of Repre- 



CAMPAIGN ARGUMENTS 191 

sentatives ; the bitter debates of the Senate and the House ; 
the unsparing presentation of the evils of slavery in the 
Republican press; the responsive sympathy of Sunday 
Schools and Churches for blacks in distress; the moblike 
resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law and the rescue of fugitive 
slaves; the enactment of the personal liberty laws in the 
various state legislatures ; the repugnance of courts to con- 
vict and punish the stealers and rescuers of the fugitives; 
the refusal of the Northern governors to give up offenders 
to the South under writs of extradition ; the popular terror- 
ism practiced on Southerners traveHng quietly in the North 
with their slaves ; the outcome of the Lemmon case in the 
courts of New York ; the prominence in the Northern press 
of the alleged kidnapping cases in the Border states; the 
burning indignation at the foreign slave trade, at the govern- 
ment's lukewarm attitude in regard to the suppression of 
the trade, and at the demand in the South for its reopen- 
ing; the sympathy for the free negroes; the fierce denun- 
ciation of slavery by religious bodies and by the reUgious 
press ; the division and strife in the great national charitable 
societies. These things all had but one meaning, and that 
was that the Northern people were mightily opposed to 
slavery and stood ready to strike it mortal blows. This 
was the inexorable logic of daily events,^ and it was the 
genuine Republican doctrine. None could deny it. 

That this interpretation is fair and true, the testimony of 
many bold spirits goes to prove. John Went worth. Mayor 
of Chicago and editor of the Chicago Democrat, wrote : 
''A scheme may be devised and carried out which will result 
in the peaceful, honorable, and equitable emancipation of all 
the slaves, . . . the states must be made free . . . the work 
will be one of time and patience, but it must be done." ^ 
Wilham H. Seward, when asked how long the ''irrepressible 

1 See Chap. IV. 

* The New York Herald, August 1, 1860. 



192 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

conflict" would last, replied: ''So long as the wrong exists, 
and right and reason are left free to combat it. I hold 
that slavery is wrong, and myself and those who think with 
me, are in a conflict with those who think slavery right. 
There are but two sides to the question." ^ In a fiery speech 
in Lansing, Michigan, he declared : "I will favor, as long as 
I can, within the limits of constitutional action, the decrease 
and diminution of African slavery in all the states." ^ At 
St. Joseph, Missouri, speaking of freedom, he said: "But it 
is going through; it is bound to go through. As it has 
already gone through eighteen of the states of the Union, so it 
is bound to go through all of the other fifteen. It is bound 
to go through all of the thirty-three states of the Union, for 
the simple reason that it is going through all the world." ^ 
In his own way, Horace Greeley was as representative a 
Repubhcan as WiUiam H. Seward. He wrote: ''Beheving 
slavery to be a flagrant violation of the inahenable rights of 
man, a burning reproach to the country, an enemy to pros- 
perity and progress in art, intelhgence, and civihzation, I 
mean to labor for its eradication from my own and all other 
countries, so long as I live. But recognizing the right of 
each state to regulate its own domestic concerns, I stand 
ready to forego and desist from all political action respecting 
slavery from the moment the slave states disclaim all inten- 
tion, forego all efforts, to extend their pecuhar institution 
beyond their own limits. Thenceforward I will oppose 
slavery in Virginia or elsewhere exactly as I oppose intem- 
perance or gambling there — not otherwise." ^ Again he 
wrote: ''We pray God in his own good time, to make an 
end of it everywhere, and would gladly, gratefully, have the 
time come in our day. . . . We all rejoice at every evidence 

1 The New York Herald, August 27, 1860. 

2 The New York Herald, September 8, 1860. 
» The New York Tribune, October 1, 1860. 

* The New Haven Daily Palladium, October 24, 1800. 



CAMPAIGN ARGUMENTS 193 

from time to time afforded that the fabric of human bondage 
totters to its fall. But if you ask us to undertake the over- 
throw of slavery in the states, we will answer you, we will 
each do whatever is within his power to put a speedy end 
to slavery; but we citizens of New York or New England 
have no power over the laws of Virginia or Alabama. We will 
do our best, whenever opportunity shall be afforded us, to 
convince the citizens of these states that they ought to 
abolish slavery within their respective states." ^ 

The New Haven Daily Palladium beheved and hoped that 
''a speedy abandonment of slavery as an industrial institu- 
tion would come in good time." The radical program of 
Sumner's "Barbarism of Slavery" was spread before thou- 
sands as a RepubHcan campaign document, while Sumner 
himself. Hale, Burhngame, Giddings, Lovejoy, and C. 
M. Clay were spreading the same teachings. One of the 
party's most popular campaign speakers, Carl Schurz, a 
young German emigrant of thirty-one years of age and him- 
self a member of the Republican national committee, stood 
forth boldly in the slave city of St. Louis and in a great 
speech manfully pleaded with the slaveholders to give up 
their slaves and join the ranks of antislavery; the animus 
of the party behind the speech cannot be doubted. ^ The 
standard bearer of the party, Abraham Lincoln, '^always 
hated slavery as much as any abolitionist," and through the 
medium of his famous senatorial convention speech, which 
was in wide circulation as a campaign document, he was day 
after day declaring to multitudes that the contest between 
slavery and freedom would go on till the nation was entirely 
free or entirely slave ; and he believed that freedom would 
win. 

The Democratic interpretation of the RepubHcan posi- 

' The New York Inde-pendent, September 27, 1860. 

2 The members of the national committee read and approved of this 
speech before it was delivered. See Appendix for the speech in full. 
o 



194 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

tion is not without weight in this connection. The Demo- 
crats persistently "saw the nigger peeping through the fence." 
Witness their campaign transparencies and mottoes. In a 
great procession of fusionists in New York City one trans- 
parency pictured a farm scene. H. G. was in front and a 
negro and Abe were sitting on rails. H. G., shabbily 
dressed, as was his wont, and with the Tribune in hand, 
says : ''Vote our ticket — we are not abohtionists until Old 
Abe is elected." A cunning Yankee eyes him and rephes : 
''I see the nigger peeping through the fence." A second 
scene represented a corner of fence rails. Abe was astride 
the rails and beneath him in a lurking attitude was a greasy, 
wooly negro; H. G. was in front, with pants stuck in his 
boots and Tribune in his pocket ; he waved away the atten- 
tion of a good-looking man who pointed with his cane to 
the nigger and chuckled : "I see the nigger peeping through 
the fence." Round about were the words : ''Lincoln on the 
fence, the nigger on the fence, the nigger under the fence, the 
nigger on the wood pile." ^ 

1 Others of these transparencies were as follows : First, there was a 
truck covered with flags and devices and drawn by gayly caparisoned 
horses. "Weighed in the balance" said the inscription. Old Abe was 
on the center of a beam, suspended by a pivot. On one end was a very 
fat negress, and on the other was H. G., falUng from his position. Over 
the negress was the scroll, "Guess I'se the heaviest, Massa." The bat- 
tered hat of the philosopher was on the ground, marked Tribune. Second, 
a small truck was drawn by a jackass and occupied by two people, one 
representing the well-known editor, dressed in white hat and drab coat, the 
other a negress ; the man was paying loving attention to the negress. 
The whole was labelled, "The effect of the irrepressible conflict." Third, 
there was a boat at the head of which was Abe with the flag "Discord," 
and H. G. at the stern holding the tiller and the Tribune. Between the 
two sat the amalgamationists, a thick-lipped negro embracing a white girl ; 
a fellow darkey exclaims, "I'se looking at you. Sambo," and Sambo 
chuckles, "Yah, yah." The boat is labelled " Steamer Abe Lincoln, Cap- 
tain Greeley, for the Mormon settlement, November 7, 1860." The 
prow of the boat touches the land and is met by Jonathan who says, 
i'Look here. Old Abe, you can't land that crowd here," and Abe replies, 
I'Why Jonathan, these are my principles," and H. G. says "Colored 



CAMPAIGN ARGUMENTS 195 

This testimony of the Democracy and of the leaders of 
the Repubhcan party accords well with the evidence of daily 
events in reveahng Repubhcan aggression. The party 
hoped to destroy slavery, and this was something new in a 
large political organization. 

While both Repubhcan and Democratic aggression were 
powerful and, for the most part, sectional movements, seces- 
sion, on the one hand, sprang from the carefully thought-out 
plans and programs of definite leaders, whereas antislavery 
arose, without leadership, from the spirit of an unnumbered 
multitude of common people. Each denied its own aggres- 
sion, and each affirmed that of the other. The slaveholders 
pointed out that their measures were the logical outcome of 
the constitutional principles held by Yancey and other 
leaders in 1848 and even earher, and that those were the 
real aggressors who in more recent years adopted anti- 
slavery as their political principle. Repubhcans appealed 
to the changes in the Democratic party practices and prin- 
ciples to fasten the blame on that party and affirmed that the 
true act of aggression was the rapid conversion of an entire 
party to the proslavery principles originally held by only a 
handful. Rem^oved from the heat of the conflict, the pres- 
ent generation regards the rival contentions with impar- 
tiahty and as its just verdict must declare that each party 
was acting upon principles developed practically simul- 
taneously, that each was guilty of aggression and that each, 
from its own point of view, was justified in its aggression. 
Assuredly the secessionists were justified in their step. 
They believed that slavery was right — it does not matter 
for the moment how they arrived at this conclusion ; with 
this assumption in their minds, no other course than seces- 
sion from the Union for the protection of their vast property 

folks have preference of staterooms" ; one of the party says "Free love 
and free niggers will certainly elect Old Abe if he pilots us safe." See the 
Liberator, November 2, ISGO. . - 



196 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

was possible. In the Union, then or very soon thereafter, 
with the triumph of the antislavery Repubhcans bent on 
universal freedom, their milHons and billions invested in 
slaves were sure to be swept away. To remain in the 
Union and suffer that fate would have been weak and repre- 
hensible in the extreme. The only possible chance for safety 
lay in getting away from their RepubHcan brethren into 
a government of their own. The Repubhcans, too, were 
justified in their course. As antislavery, freedom-loving 
men, they were appealed to in their moral natures, and were 
swept along by a great and irresistible wave of moral sym- 
pathy. Thus the infinite pathos of the ensuing civil war. 
Both sides were right ! Neither could have given in and 
have remained true to itself. The North was right in oppos- 
ing slavery, the South was right in seceding from the Union 
in its defense. That the rest of the world in 1860 outside 
the Southern states beheved, and all the world now believes, 
slavery a moral wrong, does not alter the fact that in 1860 
the South deemed it a moral right. 

A topic of interest to contemporaries, because of supposed 
partisan advantage, concerned the existence or the non- 
existence of a concerted conspiracy on the part of the slave- 
holders to break up the party conventions of the year in 
order later to break up the Union. If it could be shown 
that the slaveholders went into the Charleston convention 
for the express purpose of breaking it up and rendering the 
election of Lincoln more certain, as well also as to afford to 
themselves a pretext for secession, then the movement and 
its sponsors, at the moment, would be discredited. For the 
men of that day loved their party, especially the Democrats 
who had been triumphant in so many contests. To these 
men treason to their party was most base; few crimes 
worse. Accordingly the Douglasites spared no opportunity 
to confront the slaveholders with conspiracy charges and 
to rake up all the related facts possible.^ 

1 See pp. 176-178. 



CAMPAIGN ARGUMENTS 197 

William L. Yancey loomed up as the arch conspirator, 
and his words, already quoted,^ seconded by the equally 
determined words of scores of lesser hghts, would seem 
amply to prove the plot against the Union, as charged by 
Douglas, Bell, and many others. But the evidence does 
not show that these men went into the Charleston con- 
vention to wreck that body and the Democratic party, 
in order to ride over the ruins into the dissolution of 
the Union, although the opposition constantly made this 
charge; with present knowledge this can never be proved. 
It cannot be affirmed at what moment the self-confessed 
disunionists decided when was the time to strike, — before 
the Charleston convention, during that convention, or after 
it. Nor is this knowledge exceedingly important, for if 
the Southern statesmen were far-sighted enough to reahze 
that a rupture of the Charleston convention would aid them 
in achieving secession from the Union, they are to be com- 
mended for their foresight. Certainly, by the time of that 
convention the intentions of the Repubhcans as to slavery 
and the probabihty of Repubhcan success in the coming 
presidential election, which would furnish the justification 
of secession, were plain to all the world. All is fair in love 
and war, and most of all in pofitics. If the rupture of the 
convention was the simplest step toward accomplishing the 
disunion determined upon, Yancey and his followers are not 
to be condemned. 2 

Subsidiary topics found a place in the Repubhcan pro- 
gram; in the campaigns of the other parties, though not 
altogether in their platforms, they were completely disre- 
garded. These were the tariff, internal improvements, the 
Pacific raihoad, the Pacific telegraph, and the homestead 
act. In the House of Representatives at Washington, scores 

^ See pp. 176-178. 

* On pp. 115-116 the opinion is expressed that Yancey did not disrupt the 
Charleston convention for the ultimate purpose of disrupting the Union. 



198 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

of speeches were made in favor of a protective tariff, par- 
ticularly by members from Pennsylvania and New Jersey, 
and a tariff bill was passed in that body, but was imme- 
diately smothered in the Democratic Senate ; the Republican 
convention at Chicago strongly indorsed the policy ; ^ and 
in the campaign minor references to it were made in pubhc 
speech. But beyond this the economic doctrine of protec- 
tion to industries received httle recognition. Both branches 
of the Democracy were in opposition. Even here, however, 
candidate Douglas did not miss a chance to twist. He who 
in 1855 had said: "I am a free trade man to the fullest 
extent we can carry it, and at the same time collect revenue 
enough to defray the expenses of the government. In 
other words I am for no other kind of a tariff than a revenue 
tariff," as a candidate for the presidency in 1860, while 
speaking in Pennsylvania, praised the protective policy. It 
was the Keystone state and New Jersey with large iron 
interests, that were mainly responsible for the prominence of 
the question. 

The doctrine of internal improvements by the general 
government was brought to the front by the strong message 
of President Buchanan vetoing an act to appropriate $55,000 
from the national treasury to improve St. Clair Flats in 
Michigan between Lakes Huron and Erie, and by the oppos- 
ing platform declaration of the Republicans in favor of such 
improvements. The word ''regulate" in the constitutional 
clause giving Congress power ''to regulate commerce with 
foreign nations, and among the several states and with the 
Indian tribes," said the President, who adhered to strict 
construction of the constitution, did not mean to create but 
rather to rule that which was already created. "What a 
vast field would the exercise of this power open for jobbing 
and corruption. . . . Members of Congress, from an 

1 As the platform was read to the convention, more applause was given 
to the tariff plank than to any other. 



CAMPAIGN ARGUMENTS 199 

honest desire to promote the interests of their constituents, 
would struggle for improvements within their districts, and 
the body itself (Congress) must necessarily be converted 
into an arena, where each would endeavor to obtain from 
the treasury as much money as possible for his own locality. 
The temptation would prove irresistible. A system of log- 
rolling (I know of no word so expressive) would be inaugu- 
rated, under which the treasury would be exhausted, and 
the Federal government be deprived of the means necessary 
to execute those great powers clearly confided to it by the 
constitution for the purpose of promoting the interests and 
vindicating the honor of the country." Let Michigan 
herself, with the consent of Congress, provide for the de- 
sired improvement by levying tonnage duties on passing 
commerce; that great state should ''cease to depend on the 
treasury of the United States." He admitted that the gov- 
ernment concerned itself with such improvements as light- 
houses, buoys, beacons and public piers, but this was only 
after a secession of land for the purpose had been obtained 
from the states.^ 

In spite of this admirable message, which revealed the 
President at his best, strong pubhc sentiment was crystal- 
lizing in favor of the opposite view of the powers of the gov- 
ernment, and with this the Repubhcans identified them- 
selves. Surely the historian must record that Buchanan 
as a prophet has been vindicated. 

In the minds of the people, of all the various public im- 
provements then proposed, a railroad to the Pacific seemed 
the most desirable ; party conventions, Democratic (of both 
factions) and Repubhcan alike, united in the demand. The 
West was calhng for the undertaking in the belief that it 
would aid them in the conquest of the country and in the 
general spread of population; the East was moved by 
considerations of commercial gain. Horace Greeley, in an 

* U. S. Senate Executive Documents, 36 Cong., 1 Sess., No. 6. 



200 



PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 



almost forgotten book/ summed up the arguments. The 
arrivals and departures by sea at the port of San Francisco 
told their own story. Many more traveled westward 



San Francisco 






Arrivals 


Departures 


1849 


91,415 
36,462 
27,182 
66,988 
33,232 
47,531 
29,198 
28,119 
22,990 




1850 . , 




1851 


22,946 


1852 


22,946 


1853 


30,001 


1854 


23,508 


1855 


22,898 


1856 


22,747 


1857 


16,902 







overland, 60,000 in 1854, 12,000 in 1857, and 30,000 in 1859 ; 
some traversed the plains eastward. In all, 50,000 people 
were annually crossing the continent one way or the other, 
and nine-tenths of these would travel by the cheaper and 
quicker railroad, if only the opportunity were afforded. 
Moreover, with the railroad two and three times as many 
would set out as did actually set out without it ; if the rail- 
road had existed in 1850, two million Anglo-Saxons would at 
that very time be on the Pacific coast. The author con- 
sidered the output of gold which averaged fifty million dollars 
per year for the previous ten years, or five hundred million 
in all. In return for all this outflow of treasure, milHons of 
dollars worth of silks, jewelry, spices, drugs, etc., were coming 
to the coast in traffic that always sought the quickest route. 
Some of the government mail subsidy of a million and a half 
dollars for service over the Isthmian route could be secured 
for the new road, as well as the six milHon per year then 
expended for transportation of soldiers and munitions of war 

* An Overland Journey from Nero York to San Francisco in the Summer 
of 1859, by Horace Greeley, New York and San Francisco, 1860. 



CAMPAIGN ARGUMENTS 201 

westward; Mormon patronage also could be counted upon. 
Along the route, population and trade would be stimulated. 
Greeley thought that in all a trade of $17,000,000 per yesir 
could be diverted to the road, a sum that would be vastly 
increased by the new trade sure to be opened in the Pacific 
with Asiatic countries. The road would increase the effi- 
ciency of the army, render the mails more sure and frequent, 
and advance the cause of education in general.^ Despite 
all the well-known practical difficulties of construction, a 
railroad to the Pacific was indispensable ; it would be worth 
more to the country than a dozen Cubas. 

Even President Buchanan went beyond the bounds of 
strict construction of the constitution in favor of the enter- 
prise, and declared that it might well be looked upon as an 
aid in guarding the Pacific coast from foreign enemies and 
as such could be undertaken by the national government 
under the war power of Congress. Many Southerners 
also, for the moment, cast aside strict construction ideas, 
although it was generally for a Southern Pacific for which 
they gave their voice ; they could never be brought to assist 
the Republicans in favor of the Northern route. 

The same interests sought a telegraph to the Pacific, and 
in the two houses of Congress there was the same sectional 
clash of opposing sides, the same inability to agree on 
details, 2 

The strongest of the minor issues advanced by the Repub- 
licans embraced the subject of a homestead act, by which it 
was sought to attract settlers to the West through cheap 
pubHc lands. As a result of the panic in 1857 and the re- 

* One argument, later of importance, does not seem now to have been 
prominent; such a connection with the Pacific regions would tend to 
prevent the possible secession of those regions from the Union. 

2 A typical Western paper, the Topeka Tribune, ridiculed this project ; 
the Indians would cut down the wires, the prairie fires would burn the 
poles, and to guard the line from these evils would require the services of 
thousands of men. 



202 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

suiting hard times there was hardly any other topic in the 
whole West worthy of political discussion; a homestead 
policy was stronger than any party.^ Men in their ruin 
were seeking the aid of the government. The Nebraska 
legislature passed an act relieving the settler's homestead 
and twenty acres of land for a certain period from all attach- 
ment, levy, or sale, provided the settler himself lived on the 
land. ''Come to Nebraska," said the Nebraska City News, 
"snap your fingers in the face of your creditors; strike out 
a bold path for the West and for Nebraska; here be men 
again, and secure for yourselves farms, homes, and a hberal 
competency for life, then hke honest and honorable men pay 
off all just and honorable demands upon you, here and else- 
where." 2 

While the whole West, u-respective of party, Democrats 
and Repubhcans, Douglas men and Lincoln men, called for 
the proposed national bounty, the Repubhcans seemed to 
make the more consistent appeal to propitiate the sentiment. 
Aside from the opposition in the Senate of the vice presi- 
dential candidate, the party was practically united for the 
measure; Repubhcan votes, in previous years, had stood 
by it in time of defeat ; Repubhcan senators and representa- 
tives arranged the details of the Homestead Act of 1860, 
which the Democratic President vetoed. The Democratic 
record was much less welcome. Douglas, as a western man, 
had always worked for free homesteads, but three times in 
eight years Democratic votes had defeated the bill in the 
Senate, and crowning all was the veto message of the Demo- 
cratic President. Only personally, therefore, and not on the 
record of his party, could Douglas meet the Republican 
appeal to the western voters. 

1 This was the opinion of Horace Greeley, expressed in a letter, dated 
Davenport, Iowa, early in 1860. See the Democrat and News, Davenport, 
Iowa, September 27, 1860. 

2 The Nebraska City News, Nebraska City, Nebraska, January 21, 1860. 



CAMPAIGN ARGUMENTS 203 

A special argument for free homesteads, in addition to the 
economic considerations usually urged, was the antislavery 
contention of the Republicans, who favored filhng the West 
with hard-working, independent, free soil settlers, to win 
the section for freedom. Small independent owners would 
people the country faster than would large slaveholders; 
posted in all the West, they would hem in slavery in the 
Southern states, surround it ''by a cordon of fire," and con- 
tribute to the final destruction of the system by rendering 
its expansion impossible. Nor were the Southerners un- 
conscious of the force of this reasoning, for defense of 
slavery led them to oppose the homestead policy from the 
very beginning ; in their efforts they brought both the Whig 
and the Democratic parties over to their side, and not till 
the new RepubHcan party was born on the antislavery issue 
did free homesteads secure adequate political recognition. _ 

Buchanan's veto message represented the opposition. By^' 
strict construction of the constitution it was impossible for 
Congress to give pubhc lands away to individuals; ''to dis- 
pose of" did not mean "to give away" — such a degree 
of control over the territories Congress did not possess. 
To those who paid one dollar and twenty-five cents for their 
western lands, had then settled them and constructed roads, 
established schools, and laid foundations of prosperous 
communities, it would be unfair to allow others to come in 
and settle by their side on very cheap or free lands ; to the 
old soldiers of former wars, who had been paid in part for 
their services by warrants on the pubhc lands, the measure 
would be unfair, for the value of their warrants would de- 
crease, if others were allowed to acquire equally good lands 
at a cheaper rate; the measure would be unfair in its dis- 
crimination in favor of agriculturists as against artisans and 
laborers, and unfair to the old states as compared with the 
new; and finally, as an inducement to secret and lawful 
agreements in taking up land, the act would really lead to an 



204 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

increase of speculation rather than to the destruction of 
speculation, as was claimed by its supporters. PubHc 
speculation it would indeed kill, but the hidden agreements 
would multiply. Finally, it would diminish the government 
revenue.^ 

Fortunatel}^ for the country this view of James Buchanan 
on free homesteads was soon to be overthrown. 

Although these less important issues were entirely subor- 
dinate to the great slavery issue, they still represented 
distinct needs in certain localities, as in the West where the 
Mississippi valley was in a critical period of development. 
After a decade of rapid growth, during which the section 
drew more attention to itself, it was now in a position in 
national politics, where Congressional action seemed des- 
tined to make or mar the record. The prominence of the 
West in national life was now assured. 

^ The Works of James Buchanan, collected and ed, by John Basset 
Moore, Philadelphia and London, 1908-1910, X, 443. 



CHAPTER VIII 

LEADERS AND CONDUCT OF THE CAMPAIGN 

TNCONTESTABLY Stephen A. Douglas was the great- 
-*- est figure on the contemporary pohtical stage, the true 
giant of the times; more attention was given to him 
by campaign speakers and newspapers than to any other 
American. Forty-seven years of age, in the prime of phys- 
ical manhood, and of uncommon native powers of intellect, 
he well represented the vigor of will and the pushing rest- 
lessness characteristic of Americans. Short of stature, 
with broad full chest, massive head and face lined with care 
and thought, with severe expression, and with a voice loud 
and clear, he was a powerful campaign speaker. His wit was 
shrewd, his tongue ready, while his good nature extended even 
to recklessness. Although of no general culture, he could 
master a subject quickly ; he was always able to command 
his knowledge, and remarkable clearness of statement char- 
acterized his every utterance. His personal magnetism 
before an audience was commanding. But his tastes were 
low and his manner vulgar, and both in Washington and in 
the West his intimates were of the bar room. He took no 
account of the moral element in politics and made no ap- 
peals to it. Few men thoroughly trusted him, few, if any, 
shed tears over his defeat. He was a trickster, whose next 
move no one could predict. While Lincoln was swept into 
power on the crest of a mighty wave of moral sentiment, 
which he always recognized and served, the morally deficient 

205 



206 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

Douglas obstinately turned his face and was over- 
whelmed.^ 

In illustration of Douglas' unbridled ambition for the 
presidency, the following story was told. Before the Demo- 
cratic convention of 185G William L. Marcy gave "a, dinner to 
the candidates." In good humor and satire, with the charm 
of social intercourse for which he was famous, Marcy took 
up in order the names of his guests and discussed each one's 
chances for the nomination. He ended without mentioning 
Douglas and the latter broke in, "Well, Governor, what 
do you think of my chances ?" ''Beg pardon, Mr. Douglas, 
that reminds me of a story. When I was a boy in my native 
town in Massachusetts, standing by the roadside one day, 
a horseman at full speed, his steed foaming at the mouth, 
suddenly drew up and asked the distance to the next town. 
'Ten miles,' came the reply. 'And how long will it take me 
to get there?' demanded the excited horseman. 'Why, 
look here, my good friend, if you ride any way decent, it will 
take just about two hours, but if you go like hell and damna- 
tion, you will never get there.'" Whereat Douglas got the 
laugh. 

No ambitious man was ever more censorious, egotistic, and 
condescending. "When a man tells me he will vote for me 
if nominated, wonderful condescension indeed!" he said in 
the Senate ; "vote for me if nominated ! As if such a man 
could for a minute compare records with me in labor for 
the Democratic party !" At Newark, New Jersey, he used 
the following language: "I confess that my ambition — 
my individual choice — would be to retain my seat in the 

^ At an out-of-doors reception in Rhode Island, Douglas stood with a big 
cigar in his mouth, supporting himself with a heavy cane in one hand, 
while with the other he shook the hands of the people. At a reception in 
the hotel parlor in Norwich, Connecticut, in the presence of refined and ele- 
gantly attired women, careful of the cleanliness of their gowns as these 
swept the floor, he stood with his cigar in his mouth, coarsely spitting on 
the floor. 



LEADERS AND CONDUCT OF THE CAMPAIGN 207 

Senate, in preference to the presidency, and if elected I shall 
deem that I make a sacrifice in accepting it rather than you 
by the change of place. If, therefore, I consent to accept 
yom- votes, I shall do it on the express condition that I 
render you quite as great a favor by receiving them as you do 
by giving them. I don't want the office unless for your good 
and mine, and the good of our children and their posterity." 

His campaign tour of the country was the most sensational 
in the history of the country to that time. Practically every 
state, with the exception of several in the South, and prac- 
tically every large city, outside of Charleston, South Caro- 
lina, heard him ; for over two months he spoke continuously, 
sometimes delivering a score or more of speeches in a day, 
The severe and dignified Washington could not be imagined 
travehng from state to state, haranguing crowd after crowd, 
flattering, cajoling, joking, handshaking, to win a few votes. 
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were politicians who 
coveted office, but neither could make a speech. Even 
Henry Clay, prince of canvassers, was silent when a candi- 
date, except to write a few letters. Jackson and Harrison 
made several speeches in their own states ; candidates Cass 
and Scott essayed speech-making, but with unhappy re- 
sults, and Fillmore and Buchanan behttled themselves by 
a few speeches. Fremont in 1856 was silent. But Douglas 
now spoke everywhere, before all kinds of audiences and 
without formal preparation. Many indiscriminate questions 
on the most important subjects he answered offhand, as 
at Norfolk on the subjects of secession and coercion. Often 
he evaded. His bravery was ready for everything. 

Artemus Ward, then a young newspaper man con- 
nected with the Cleveland Plaindealer, characterized Douglas 
as follows : "Mister editor : — I seez my quil to inform the 
public, through the medeum of your column, of the great 
addishun I have gest made 2 mi grate metropoliticion sho 
bizness, and darin slak rope & gimnastic Surkus. Last 



208 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

iiite I had an intervu with Stephen A. Duglas, the renouned 
pohtikal ambidexter & proprioter and Cheef Kloun of the 
grate popler suvrenty sho. Mr. Duglas is generally kald 
the littil jiant from his havin performed the grate feet of 
wakin the hole length of Mason's and Dixon's close hne, 
the dred scot decisshun in one hand and his hole popler 
suvrenty sho in the uther ; and also for pulin up the grate 
tree kald the Missourie Kompromise, which was first planted 
in 1787 by Thomas Gefferson & uthers, and set out again in 
1820. Mr. Duglas puld up this tre and the constitushun 
with it and plaist them under his feat. 

''But I was goin on to sa that he haz bin travHn thru the 
estern & suthern stats performin his triks and speekin his 
pees. The way he takes um in with his popler suvrenty 
game is not slo. He holds out a bil to the peple, and sez, 
ther's popler suvrenty — there's the grate prinsipul. At 
first tha think tha see it ; but when tha look a httil sharper 
it vandishes like the du on the oriental kornstalk when the 
noonda sun rises in the east on a thunderin hot da in the 
middle of Juli ; it kant be found nowhere. The folks sum 
times git mad and korner him in a tite plase, but he is tarnal 
smaul and kan krawl thru a mity httil hole. But tha sa he 
did wun grate trik at one plais — he ate an ox and 20,000 
klams. 

" As soon as I herd of his arrival in town I went to pay him 
a vizit. I found him in the sho room spealdn his pees. I 
thawt I would not be very formal, and sez I, haven't ye got 
that pees larnt yit? Sez he, yes — but thers sum of the 
doktrin the pepledont bleeve and I have toalteritoccashunaly 
to sute the plase. Says I, how doo yu like the sho bizness ? 
Sez he, it dont pa. Says I, my sho is dooin a stavin bizness. 
He groned and a tere started in his i, and says he, I thowt I 
shood make a good deal out of mi popler suvrenty ; but, sez 
he, it has spilt the hul sho ; the pepel begin to see thru it ; 
and tha sa it is a humbug. Sez i, what are yu gooing to doo 



LEADERS AND CONDUCT OF THE CAMPAIGN 209 

with it ? Sej he, as soon as I have yused up my posters and 
advertisements, I shal thro it overborde. 

''Sez i, Duglas, whattle yu tak for yur popsovrenty ? Sez 
he, ile sel it cheep. I told him I diddent no how too manig 
his triks; but I wood go into partnership with him in the 
sho biznes. Sez he, its a bargin. I then axt him what he 
thawt of takin along some darkies 2 sing songs and dans the 
hornpipe. Sez he, I wunt have ennything to do with the 
nigger bizness agin; it dont pa. He sed he went into the 
nigger bizness in 1854 and had ben goin down hil ever sins ; 
he said it had nerly rooined him. The httil jiant then per- 
formed on the slak rope and chin the greest pole and spoke 
his pees on the top. One of Abe Lincoln's rales was next 
browt in, and Duglas was set on and rode owt thru the bak 
dors. Duglas is about 5 feet hi, and a thunderin grate man 
for wun of his size. I maid a frenological examinashun of 
him. Hee is a man of tremendous power. His kaves are 
huge. His bump of humbugging is as big as a goos eg. 
Conseenchusness is caved in. Hede make a furst rate crier 
in the sho bizness; his bump of tehn yarns aint smawl. 
Duglas and I have kompleted our program for our nu sho. 
We call it the nu yunion sho, greest pole surkus together 
with uther alarmin and darin feets. 

''Duglas wil perform the grand dubble and single handed 
game of popler suvrenty. This game can be seen best with 
the ize shet. But I must klose. We are gooing Westward 
ho in a fu daze. Yurs in haste, Artemus Ward, Jr. pee es. 
Duglas seze give popler suvrenty a good bio in the paper." ^ 

Abraham Lincoln, fifty-one years old, was an unknown. 
His words, acts, his career, were followed in the daily press 
once, where those of the Little Giant were mentioned a hun- 
dred times. ''\\Tio is Abraham Lincoln?" queried the 
Democrats in derision, as they recalled the earlier query, 
''Who is James K. Polk ?" ''We will return James K. Polk 

1 The New Haven Daily Palladium, October 23, 1860. 



210 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

to the convention that discovered him," came back the an- 
swer with appropriate apphcation. In the long hst of dark 
horses from 1840 to 1860, including Harrison, Polk, and 
Taylor, none was darker than Lincoln. He was an unedu- 
cated man, a vulgar village pohtician, without experience 
worth mentioning in the practical duties of statesmanship, 
j said the Democratic New York Herald; a third-rate western 
lawyer, continued the same paper, poorer even than poor 
Pierce, without the ability to speak good EngUsh grammar, 
hackneyed, ilhterate.^ 

After studying Lincoln's picture in Harper's Weekly, the 
, editor of the Charleston Mercury wrote as follows : "A horrid 

^ looking wretch he is, sooty and scoundrelly in aspect, a cross 
between the nutmeg dealer, the horse swapper, and the night 
man, a creature ' fit evidently for petty treason, small strate- 
gems and all sorts of spoils.' He is a lank-sided Yankee of 
the uncomeliest visage, and of the dirtiest complexion. 
Faugh ! after him what decent white man would be Presi- 
dent ?" 2 ''It is humiliating, if not disgusting," said the same 
paper, "to see a party in this country putting forward a man 
for the presidential chair, once occupied by Washington and 
Jefferson, whose only achievements have been that he spUt 
a few hundred rails in his early life, and at a later period villi- 
fied the armies of his country while fighting her battles on 
foreign soil." ^ 

The Houston Telegraph, of Houston, Texas, thus described 
him: ''Lincoln is the leanest, lankest, most ungainly mass 

J of legs and arms and hatchet face ever strung on a single 
frame. He has most unwarrantably abused the privilege, 
which all poUticians have, of being ugly, and when he unfolds 
his everlasting legs and arms and rises to speak, his unique 
countenance, expressive of the most complete equanimity, 

1 The New York Herald, May 19 and 22, 1860. 

* The Charleston Mercury, June 9, 1860. 

' The New York Herald, July 24, 1860, quoting the Charleston Mercury. 



LEADERS AND CONDUCT OF THE CAMPAIGN 211 

the auditor will feel inclined to beat a most precipitate re- 
treat; but a few moments dispell the illusion and he finds 
himself hstening eagerly to a most profound and concise 
reasoner, the dry details of political controversy being reheved 
by flashes of genuine wit. His forensic utterances are char- 
acterized by an earnestness of manner, and apparent honesty, 
to which he is mainly indebted for his success in carrying 
with him the popular feeling." ^ 

That these criticisms and jibes went home to the Repub- 
Ucans is evidenced by the rapid appearance in the party press 
of scores of descriptions of the candidate's home Hfe and of 
his manners and habits. His refraining from tobacco and 
Hquors ; his refusal to entertain with whisky and insistence 
on ice water, when at his home the Repubhcan committee 
officially informed him of the nomination ; the plain, rather 
bare looking parlor in the modest frame house, the customary 
httle table in the center of the room, and on it the silver- 
plated ice water pitcher, Bible, and photographs ; all these 
things were noted. "Truth constrains us to say that 'Hon- 
est Abe ' is not a handsome man ; but he is not so ill-looking 
as he has been represented. 'Handsome is that handsome 
does,' however, is a sensible adage," declared the New York 
Tribune. The Worcester Spy, Worcester, Massachusetts, be- 
lieved that its candidate had a ''strong, manly, cordial, 
winning look, which attracts every one," ^ while the Albany 
Evening Journal insisted that no one could rise from a half 
hour's conversation with Mr. Lincoln without being agreeably 
impressed ahke with his voice, manner, expression, and per- 
sonal appearance. 

After the nomination Lincoln remained quietly at his home 
in Springfield, Illinois, made no important political utter- 
ances, and wrote no letters on political topics that found 
their way into the papers. This he did with the approval 

^ The New York Tribune, June 12, 1860. 

' The New Haven Daily Palladium, June 5, 1860. 



212 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

of many of the Republican leaders, including, among others, 
WiUiam Cullen Bryant.^ In conversation with a reporter 
of the New York Herald he declared that in response to in- 
vitation he would like to go into the South and discuss poUtical 
issues, but that he was dissuaded from such a course by the 
fear of ill-treatment. This was a sad confession for a presi- 
dential candidate — that there were some states which he 
dared not enter ; could anything better indicate the sectional 
nature of the IlepubUcan party ? queried the Herald. 

Douglas, who knew his adversary well, entertained for him 
perfect respect and always referred to him in the highest 
terms. Lincoln's Mexican war record was attacked by the 
Democrats with some effect, his futile but famous ''spot 
resolutions" were ridiculed, and his vote that that war was 
"unnecessary and unconstitutionally conamenced" was 
denounced.- 

A westerner thus described John C. Breckenridge : thirty- 
nine years old. Vice President of the United States ; a splen- 
did young fellow distinguished as an orator and as a states- 
man; of infinite tact, courage, and popularity; his good 
fortune is a proverb; whatever he touches turns to gold.^ 
John Bell, sixty-three years old, was a timid pohtician of the 
metaphysical school, with his face turned toward both the 
North and the South ; his mind was never made up. 

Wilham H. Seward may be set over William L. Yancey as 
a popular leader. By far the most prominent Republican 
speeches of the campaign were those of Seward, delivered on 
a long tour through New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, 
Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Kansas, and Missouri. Every 

1 The Life and Works of Willia7n Cullen Bryant, ed. by Parke Goodwin, 
New York, 1883-1884, II, 142. 

^ The "spot" resolutions called upon the President to communicate 
to the House of Representatives at what spot the Mexican war began; 
the House never acted on the resolutions. 

3 The Fayette and Union Telegraph, Connersville, Indiana, February 24, 
1860. 



J 



LEADERS AND CONDUCT OF THE CAMPAIGN 213 

speech was fresh, without repetition of former utterances, 
and far outclassed the ordinary stump speech in fervency of 
utterance, hterary quahty, elevation of thought, and great 
enthusiasm on the part of the auditors. Still some senti- 
ments ran through them all, the ''irrepressible conflict," 
to which the orator now returned after his ill-judged 
apostasy when seeking the presidential nomination,^ the 
evil effects of slavery, the necessity of curbing the slave- 
holders in the territories and in the states, the absurdity of 
secession, the manifest destiny of the United States to ab- 
sorb all the continent, and the transference of political power 
from the East to the West. It was as the oracle of the party 
that Seward spoke. Lincoln, the orator scarcely mentioned, 
and when he did condescend to refer to the candidate, it was 
done curtly. Returning homeward Seward's party reached 
Springfield, Ilhnois, where the proud, haughty, domineering 
New Yorker never left the railroad car. Far from it. But 
Abraham Lincoln, humble American, one in a large crowd, 
came to the depot and nudged his way through the crowd to 
Seward's car and into it ; Seward rose, shook hands with the 
visitor, introduced him to the members of the httle party, 
then again sat down ! There was no conversation. Finally, 
to relieve the situation, Seward made a short speech to the 
people and Lincoln found his way out of the car as best he 
could. 2 Every second of the time the easterner's attitude 
of mind was evident — he felt that he was superior to Lincoln 
and did not try to conceal it. Admirers of both men could 
wish that the incident had never happened. Why did Sew- 
ard choose to humiliate Lincoln ? Why did he not defer to 
his formally designated leader, render him homage as the 
party's candidate; and pay him a social visit in his home ? 

1 See pp. 119-120. 

2 One account had it that the Seward party left the car and proceeded 
a few feet from it ; then, for some reason which was not given, returned to 
the car. 



214 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

Personal conceit and pride furnish the only explanation. The 
Senator was not satisfied with being universally named as 
the next Secretary of State ; he judged that the first place 
was rightfully his. In this connection a comment of the New 
York Herald is most illuminating. Lincoln, in his general 
unfitness, would require some one to run the government 
for him, and Seward, who saw this and coveted the place for 
himself, was giving his support to the ticket, faint as it was, 
to win the substance if not the honors of power, dominance 
over the inferior man's mind. Deprived of the nomination, 
he nevertheless sought the post of the real President. What a 
startling and prophetic utterance, in view of the attitude of 
Seward toward his master at the beginning of the coming 
administration ! ^ 

Wilham L. Yancey was the ''Great Precipitator," the 
"Seward of the South." Early in life he served a state 
prison sentence for murder of a kinsman, then became a 
successful editor, member of the state Senate of Alabama and 
of the United States House of Representatives; he had 
favored nullification in Jackson's time, and since 1848 had 
been a secessionist of the extreme type. In his oratory he 
displayed great powers as a logician, skill in making the worse 
appear the better reason, and infinite tact in dealing with an 
audience; he possessed humor and sarcasm, and unusual 
pride in his position as the leader of the Southern movement. 
No man ever put the arguments of the South more powerfully. 

Late in the campaign, in order probably to shatter the 
behef that the slaveholders really desired the election of 
Lincoln and to make it evident that he was doing all in his 
power to ward off abolitionism, he made a speaking tour 

1 The New York Herald, August 16, 1860. The reader should here 
recall Seward's memorandum to the President, entitled "Some thoughts 
for the President's consideration, April 1, 1861," in which he mildly sug- 
gested to Lincoln that the latter was not fit to be at the executive head of 
the government and that he should turn this task over to hiin, Seward. 
The document is given in full in Hart's Contemporaries, IV, 293. 



LEADERS AND CONDUCT OF THE CAMPAIGN 215 

through nearly all the large cities of the North, where, be- 
cause of curiosity to see and hear the archconspirator, a 
respectful welcome was always accorded him. Many ques- 
tions were asked him. ''But suppose Old Abe is elected? 
what are you going to do about it ?" some one asked him at 
Baltimore. ''I suppose you hve in a slave state, my friend ? " 
''I do," came the answer. ''Well, then, just let me ask you a 
question by way of clearing the ground, and when you answer, 
I will answer you." "Ask on." Yancey then asked the ques- 
tioner what he would do if, after Old Abe was elected, another 
John Brown were to invade Virginia at the head of five 
thousand men, poison all the wells, set fire to all the houses, 
cities, and towns, murder all the women and children, set 
free all the negroes, rob all the banks, drive out all the whites, 
and take possession of the whole state. He finished and 
waited in triumph for the reply. It was instantaneous. 
"We'd stop him before he got to all that." At the timely 
answer one irrepressible burst of laughter greeted the orator, 
in which the latter was forced to join to save himself. This 
secession issue, in all the Northern cities, he uniformly 
evaded, and his evasions, in a land where Douglas' honest 
stand was very popular, undoubtedly lost Breckenridge many 
votes. ^ At Boston, when confronted by three cheers for Doug- 
las, he regained control of the audience by calling for three 
cheers for the Constitution and the Union. At Cincinnati 
he shouted with fervor that free speech was not denied in the 
South and boldly challenged any man to affirm and prove 
the contrary ; the denial was immediately forthcoming, but 
proof was sharply demanded and when this was not instan- 
taneously at hand, the tricky orator emerged in a triumphant 
blaze of oratory. 

At Boston he declared: "You go with your labor where 
you please." A voice : "No, sir, we can't go South." Yan- 
cey : "Yes, sir, you can go South. There isn't a man among 
* See pp. 322-325 for his answer in New York. 



2 1 6 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

you who is not welcome if he doesn't come to steal our nig- 
gers. We have plenty of Northern men in om- city ; they 
do not try to steal our property, or to incite rebelhon, and 
they stay. But let any one come with a lighted torch to 
this magazine under us, to blow us up and to destroy our 
society, we would be less than men if we did not hang him to 
the highest tree." 

The newspapers of the next morning, reporting this Boston 
utterance, told also of a young Boston school-teacher, who 
by invitation had gone to Alabama to take charge of an 
academy. After remaining at his post but one da}^, a sermon 
by Henry Ward Beecher and a letter from Charles Sumner 
were found in his trunk ; ducking in the pond was at once 
administered, and then the culprit had to leave. The story 
was culled from the Southern papers themselves. Said the 
Richmond Despatch, at about the same time, concerning the 
fate of three Northerners in Orange Court House, Virginia : 
''On Saturday night they were waited upon by a committee 
of armed citizens and marched at the point of the bayonet to 
the depot, while the ''Rogues' March" was played, as be- 
fitted the occasion. Here they were compelled to get on 
the cars." The Charleston Mercury reported: "Served him 
right. A man named William S. McClure, haihng from the 
state of Maine, was on Saturday last, by order of the Vigi- 
lance Committee, whipped by a negro at Grahamville for 
tampering with slaves in that vicinity. McClure was then 
placed on the cars of the Charleston and Savannah Railroad 
and arrived in this city yesterday and given in charge of the 
Mayor who will ship him by the first conveyance to the 
North." Lurid tales came out of Texas, how a Northern 
colporteur, with Bibles, religious books, histories, school- 
books, and atlases, was arrested, flogged, and finally hung 
and burned for having with him a copy of the Impending 
Crisis ; how more .John Browns were at work there, rousing 
the slaves to insmTection, burning towns, and spreading 



LEADERS AND CONDUCT OF THE CAMPAIGN 217 

universal terror ; and how finally three Northern preachers 
were hanged. 

These reports from the Lone Star state and some from the 
other Southern states may have been exaggerated for cam- 
paign purposes, but there can be no doubt that in a majority 
of instances the accounts of the persecutions of Northern 
men in the land of slavery were true; they were believed 
in the North by the masses of the people, who looked upon 
them not so much as political buncombe, but rather as the 
natural continuation of the similar attacks that undeniably 
characterized the Southern reaction after John Brown's raid. 
Scarcely a local community in any free state lacked a hero, 
who by bitter personal experience had learned the lesson of 
Southern despotism. Thus the masses of the Northern peo- 
ple, in their daily following of current events, in theu' daily 
reading of the small local press, and in their daily village 
conversation and reflection saw clearly one phase at least of 
slaveholding society at more or less close range ; and they 
were coming to despise the Southerners as more cruel, ar- 
bitrary and despotic than even the terrible Mexicans or the 
bloodthirsty Austrians in Italy. 

By these home facts many a Northern audience and many 
a Northern newspaper shrewdly parried Yancey's eloquent 
appeals ; his oratory, rhetoric, skillful reasoning, and fervid 
appeals to brotherhood, nationality, and the constitution fell 
flat. 

Yancey's leading theme was the impending danger to 
slavery. "Suppose the Repubhcan party gets into power, 
suppose another John Brown raid takes place in a frontier 
state, and suppose Sharp's rifles and pikes and bowie knives 
and all the other implements of warfare are brought to bear 
on an inoffensive people, and that Lincoln or Seward is in 
power, where will there be a force of United States marines 
to check that band ? Suppose that is the case — that the 
frontiers of the country will be lighted up by the flames of 



218 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

midnight arson, as in the case of Texas, that our towns are 
burned, that the peace of our famiUes is disturbed, that 
poison is found secreted throughout the whole country, in 
order that it may be placed in our springs and in our wells ; 
with arms and ammunition placed in the hands of this semi- 
barbarous people, what will be our fate ? Where will be the 
United States Marshals to interfere? Where will be the 
dread of this general government that exists under this pres- 
ent administration? Where will be the fear of Federal 
officers to intimidate or to prevent such movements ? Why, 
gentlemen, if Texas is now in flames, and the peace of Vir- 
ginia is invaded now, under this administration, and under 
the present aspect of things, tell me what it will be when a 
higher law government reigns in the city of Washington? 
Where then will be our peace, where our safety, when these 
people are instigated to insurrection, when men are prowhng 
about this whole country, knowing that they are protected 
by an administration that says that by the constitution free- 
dom is guaranteed to every individual on the face of the 
earth ? Can you expect any people of spirit or courage, and 
true to themselves, to their firesides, and to their families, 
can you expect such a people to render allegiance to the Con- 
stitution, permitted to be trampled under foot knowingly by 
this higher law government ? Can you expect the people of 
the South to give such a government their assent ? " ^ 

No former President or presidential candidate had any 
prominence in the campaign, neither Van Buren, Tyler, 
Fillmore, Scott, nor Pierce ; Fremont was entirely out of the 
public mind. Even President Buchanan himself was a 
sohtary figure.^ Without indorsement by either faction of 
his party and openly accused of corruption by the opposition, 

1 The New York Herald, September 22, 1860. 

* Pierce in 1856 was indorsed by the Democratic national convention at 
Cincinnati as "true to the Democratic principles and therefore true to 
the great interests of the country," and "unqualified admiration" was 
expressed for his "measures and policy." 



LEADERS AND CONDUCT OF THE CAMPAIGN 219 

the President was fast losing his friends, the Springfield Re- 
publican even going so far as to aver that in the memory of 
those then in middle hfe no President left office with so few 
friends. Those who elected him, now reviled and neglected 
him. He was represented as old and infirm, rapidly losing 
his intellectual powers, overwhelmed by the magnitude of the 
responsibihties devolving upon him, and extremely eager 
to quit office. Repeatedly he declared against a second term. 
In the spring, speaking to a large company of newspaper 
editors then visiting Washington on an excursion, he said : 
''The duties of the presidency are severe and incessant. I 
shall soon retire from them ; and if my successor shall be as 
happy in coming in as I will be in going out, he will be one 
of the happiest men in the world. (Laughter.) While I 
was Minister to England a distinguished nobleman once said 
to me, 'Mr. Buchanan, if I were to judge from your news- 
papers, I should infer that the different candidates for the 
presidency were the greatest rascals in America.' (Laughter 
and cheers.) I rephed that it did look so ; but it was really 
only a way we had of talking about each other at election 
time. (Hearty laughter and applause.) ... I shall not 
desire to draw a single breath beyond the existence of this, 
our beloved Union." ^ 

In the course of the summer the President made a political 
speech in Washington, which, as it was generously reported, 
appeared to be very eloquent. But his voice on the occasion 
was weak, almost piping, in striking contrast to his strong 
voice of former days in the Senate ; as he went on, he gradu- 
ally weakened and could hardly be heard. He spoke from 
notes and, while speaking, frequently withdrew into the White 
House to sip water. Occasionally he was interrupted by 
some one in the crowd calling out, "Go it, old man" and 
other inappropriate expressions, which he would notice by 
leaving his sentence and saying, "Well, you may say, my 

1 The Washington Constitution, May 10, 1860. 



220 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

friend, that I am an old man," and at that the crowd would 
laugh and jeer.^ 

By Democrats as well as Repubhcans Henry Clay was 
reverently remembered for his dashing leadership, his great 
statesmanship, his oratory, and the love of his fellow-men, 
and parties vied with one another in claiming devotion to 
his principles. Occasionally the ''Godlike Webster" was on 
men's hps, but little attention was paid to that statesman's 
views and still less personal affectio^n for him expressed. The 
same with John C. Calhoun, whose cold and unconquerable 
logic was sometimes called to mind, but never his person- 
ality; much of the credit for his views was reaped by his 
successor, WilUam L. Yancey. 

Next to Seward the most popular man in his party but 
with quahties very different from those of the distinguished 
Senator, was Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Trib- 
une. During the Republican national convention in Chi- 
cago admiring crowds constantly attended him, and at the 
party's ratification meeting in New York City, the night 
after the election, he was acclaimed with mighty cheers as 
the hero of the meeting, the greatest Republican present. 
''Of all men in the nation who have aided forward the aus- 
picious result, no other man has done more than he," said 
Tl^dore Tilton, chairman of the meeting; "never flowed 
nobler blood in any man's veins than beats in that man's 
heart." By common consent the New York Tribune was 
ranked with the New York Herald and the New York Times, 
the greatest American newspapers; the Weekly Tribune 
confessedly had a more widespread circulation than any 
other paper, enjoying as it did a large sale in every country 
district of the North; on the editorial pages of these daily 
and weekly editions, with a literary brilliancy and wit which 

^ This was the President's only public participation in the campaign. 
For the description of the strange and pathetic scene, see the New York 
World, July 14, 18G0. 



LEADERS AND CONDUCT OF THE CAMPAIGN 221 

to this day still appeal to a reader as the most pleasurable of 
all contemporary utterances, he aroused, informed, and 
guided pubhc opinion to a remarkable degree, and always 
left a lasting impression for human hberty. Uncouth in 
manners and appearance but of big heart and mighty brain, 
he was by common consent the newspaper champion of Black 
Repubhcanism, a typical Yankee.^ 

In the conduct of the campaign one factor ever present in 
the minds of the leaders of all parties was the possibihty that 
the election might fall into the House of Representatives 
through a failure of the people to elect. As soon as the 
disruption of the Charleston convention loomed up as a 
possibihty, the charge was made that the South was pre- 
paring to bring about this result through a spht in their 
own party and the consequent creation of a strong third 
party ; thus an election by the people would be prevented, 
in which contingency the national House alone could decide 
the issue. This, it was charged, was the chosen method for 
disrupting the Union, for the tumultuous House might well 
fail to settle a majority vote on one of three candidates for 
the presidency, the Senate might fail to unite on one of two 
candidates for the vice presidency, and there then would be 
no government. The Constitution made no provision for 
such a contingency. 2 

1 In his eulogy Til ton went on : "Sixteen years ago, on the third night 
after the election of 1844, he (Greeley) was sitting in his office awaiting the 
returns from St. Lawrence County, which were to decide for the state and 
the nation. The river boat Empire brought down the figures ; crowds 
were gathered on the pier watching her approach. The Tribune office was 
deserted by all but one man, and that was its editor. He sat alone in his 
office till a messenger broke in upon him with the adverse news. He 
read the message and then burst into tears. Well, they were manly tears. 
But on Tuesday night last the same man was sitting in his office, and 
as hour after hour only brought better and better news, the expression on 
his face grew into brighter smiles." 

2 There were fourteen Democratic states in the House, fifteen Repub- 
lican and one American; Kentucky was divided five to five, Maryland 



222 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

In solemn language the Republicans appealed to the people 
to elect the Repubhcan candidates and prevent strife in the 
House. In an election in the House much would depend on 
how the speaker used his power of appointment of commit- 
tees and his other patronage.^ Disputes would arise as to 
how each state delegation should decide its vote, whether 
by plurality, majority, unanimously, or even by a minority 
vote ; the law was silent here and precedent was not binding. 
Among the members excitement would run high, for they 
would be fresh from the passions and the excitement of the 
presidential contest before the people. The bare choice of 
a speaker had roused them to fury; many had then gone 
armed ; threats of violence had been freely uttered ; blows 
had been given and more than once it had seemed that the 
country might be on the verge of anarchy. Yet, aside from 
the moral effect of victory, the only thing at stake was the 
appointment of committees and of fifteen or twenty minor 
officials. How would it be when the presidency was the 
prize, with its control of eighty milhons of the pubHc money 
annually and the appointment of thirty thousand pubhc 
officials, absolute veto on legislation, control of treaties and 
foreign relations, and the general pilotage of the Republic ? 
Could any pubhc man desirous of peace, contemplate with- 
out horror the scenes that would probably result? No one 

three to three, and North Carolina four to four ; in Illinois an anti-Lecomp- 
ton Democrat held the balance of power. The Constitution said that 
Congress should provide for vacancies in the presidency and in the vice 
presidency, occasioned by removal, death, resignation, or inability to 
serve ; and in 1792 Congress declared that in the absence of both the Presi- 
dent and vice president the president pro tempore of the Senate should 
succeed to the presidency, and after him the speaker of the House. But 
this was not applicable to a failure to elect. If in this contingency 
Congress ordered a new election, a point would be strained. 

1 Some said that the possibility of the House election was one of the 
elements that embittered the speakership contest in the House the previous 
winter ; to gain the speakership was but a step in the struggle for the prize 
of the presidency, which it was predicted would be awarded by the House. 



LEADERS AND CONDUCT OF THE CAMPAIGN 223 

could suppose that the men who now threatened to break 
up the Union if Lincoln were elected, would allow him to be 
elected by the House, if menaces, blows, daggers, and pistols 
could prevent it. A contest would be inevitable, and as it 
went on, citizens by the thousand would gather in Washing- 
ton, street fights would ensue, the House would be invaded, 
and civil war might be precipitated at once.^ 

The House failing to elect, the Senate might quickly pro- 
ceed to choose the Breckenridge vice presidential candidate, 
Lane, as Vice President, who then would become President. 
The claim was made that the choice really lay between 
Lincoln and Lane. Or the Senate might fail to make any 
selection. 2 

In addition to these possibihties in the manipulation of a 
Congressional election of the President and Vice President, 
another possible way to beat Lincoln was through fusion of 
parties, and in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Rhode 
Island, and perhaps one or two other states, this was accom- 
phshed. As arranged by a special fusion committee in New 
York, that state's thirty-five members in its electoral college 
were to be divided, in case the Democrats won the election 
before the" people, eighteen for Douglas, ten for Bell, and 
seven for Breckenridge. Similarly, in other states there was 
the gentlemen's agreement of fusionists that if it appeared 
that Douglas would win in a state electoral college, then the 
fusionist electors of that state were to vote for him, and for 
Breckenridge if it appeared that he was to be the winner. 
The habihty of confusion and dispute in the arrangement 
was obvious ; how it would work in actual practice was not 
explained. To such an extent are the electoral colleges of 
the states mere customary institutions. 

1 The New York Times, October 8, 1860. 

2 Henry J. Raymond frequently spoke on this subject ; David Dudley 
Field devoted an entire speech to it in Philadelphia. Almost every 
Republican speaker sounded the alarm, !' Lincoln or Lane !'' 



224 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

The lack of sincere political principle displayed by the 
parties entering into these bargains and agreements did not 
escape comment. Where were true Democratic principles?'! 
was sneeringly inquired of what was contemptuously styled 
the ''Dry Goods Electoral Ticket," and who was its au- 
thorized expositor, Douglas, Breckenridge, or Bell? The 
Repubhcans were the only party that stood for moral prin- 
ciple. To Douglas' personal credit be it added that he 
openly repudiated fusion, though the partial success of the 
movement would seem to make it appear that he privately 
consented. 

Jefferson Davis is authority for the statement that both 
Bell and Breckenridge, in order to unite the divided forces 
opposed to Repubhcanism, agreed to withdraw if only Doug- 
las would do the same, but that the Illinoisian steadfastly 
refused his consent. Such an attitude would accord ^\'ith 
Douglas' well known characteristic of persistency.^ 

The spoils system, in that heyday of its power and prestige, 
was used unsparingly against Douglas and for Breckenridge. 
"Heads off!" hke the relentless cry of an avenging fury, 
seemed to pursue every Douglas man in office. ''The Presi- 
dent told me," Douglas said over and over again in his 
speeches, "that if I did not obey him and vote to force the 
Lecompton constitution upon the people of Kansas against 
their will, he would take off the head of every friend I had 
in office." ^ Buchanan denied this, although habitually 
acting with the motives attributed.^ Douglas custom offi- 
cials in Boston, Albany, Troy, and Burlington, Vermont, were 
removed, also postmasters faithful to Douglas in INIemphis, 
Tennessee, Salem, Massachusetts, Woodstock, Vermont, in 
three small towns in Indiana, in Columbus, Ohio, Albion, 

1 The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, by Jefferson Davis, 
New York, 1881, I, 52. 

2 The New York Semi-Weekly Evening Post, September 15, 1860. 
' The Washington Constitution, September 7, 1860. 



LEADERS AND CONDUCT OF THE CAMPAIGN 225 

New York, and Rutland, Vermont. This prostitution of 
public office was taken as a matter of course by the pubhc 
as well as by the President.^ Without the least suggestion 
of condemnation, a leading paper declared that in the event 
of the success of the Republicans there would be the biggest 
sweep in offices since the time of Jackson; Harrison and 
Taylor had died too soon to effect many removals of the en- 
trenched Democrats, but Lincoln was expected to make an 
absolutely clean sweep and all were ready.^ 

The most unique and original popular feature of the cam- 
paign were the Republican marching clubs, the Wide Awakes. 
Late in February at the beginning of the short campaign 
previous to the spring state election, Cassius M. Clay, a 
stanch Republican from the slave state of Kentucky, visited 
Hartford, Connecticut, to deliver a partisan address. Ex- 
citement ran high. To do escort duty from the depot a 
number of young Republicans, some of them not yet voters, 
volunteered their services, and borrowing torches from the 
fire company house and protecting their coats by glazed 
capes, with their quickly improvised torchhght procession 
they made the most interesting political demonstration ever 
seen in the city. Within a week a regular company of Wide 
Awakes of fifty members was formed ; soon there were hun- 
dreds of members in the one city and many clubs over the 

1 The Works of James Buchanan, collected and ed. by John Basset 
Moore, Philadelphia, and London, 1908-1910, X, 460. In the letter deny- 
ing the conversation with Douglas, in which the latter charged that the 
President had threatened to take off the heads of the Douglas men in 
office, Buchanan said: "Besides I have not removed one in ten of his 
friends, and not one of his relatives. Even among those of his friends 
who have rendered themselves prominently hostile to the measures of the 
administration, a majority still remain in office." This surely is an indirect 
admission that the President was to some extent using his patronage 
against Douglas. See the Washington Constitution, September 7, 1860. 

2 The New York Herald, October 12, 1860. The Executive Journal of 
the United States Senate discloses the fact of many removals from office by 
the President at this time. 



226 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

whole state ; within four weeks two thousand Wide Awakes 
from the surrounding towns attended the dedication of 
a lodge for the first society and took part in a great 
parade, while within a few months four hundred thousand 
members were enrolled in the numerous societies in every 
state of the North. The idea spread like wildfire. 

The preamble of the constitution of the unique organiza- 
tion ran as follows: "We, the undersigned, young men of 
the city of Hartford, desirous of securing the ascendency and 
perpetuity of the principles of the Republican party, and 
the election of its candidates for office, and to all places of 
honor and trust in the government, do hereby explicitly 
declare our devotion to the Constitution and the Union, our 
opposition to interference with slavery in the states where 
it now legally exists, and our unqualified and unalterable 
determination to resist by all constitutional means its further 
extension and pledge ourselves to use all honorable means 
for the success and triumph of the Republican party, and of 
the election of its candidates to office." There were regular 
weekly meetings, and military drill, but no secret meetings 
or grips or pass words ; in the marching the officers carried 
lanterns, the private members torches.^ 

Harper^s Weekly pubhshed a two-page picture of the 
demonstration of the society in New York. Fifth Avenue 
was a blaze of light from the torches, lanterns, and fireworks, 
and crowded with fifty thousand people to witness the 
parade ; from the city alone there were five thousand Wide 
Awakes in fine, five thousand more from Connecticut, 
Rhode Island, and even Maine. Among the mottoes and 
transparencies were the following: "Free soil, free speech, 
and free men;" "Free Homesteads;" "The United States 
is rich enough to give us all a farm;" "Eternal Vigilance is 
the price of hberty;" "The Union must be preserved — 
Jackson;" "The territories must be free to the people;" 
» The New York Herald, September 19, 1860. 



LEADERS AND CONDUCT OF THE CAMPAIGN 227 

''Free soil for freemen." To the Liberator, the parade of the 
society in Boston was the most imposing pohtical demonstra- 
tion ever witnessed in that city. Ten thousand men were 
in hne, including seven thousand horsemen. Some of the 
transparencies were : "Free labor and free men all over God's 
heritage;" ''The Pilgrims did not found our empire for 
slavery;" "Plymouth Rock, the corner stone of a free 
Repubhc;" "No more slave territories." Two hundred 
negroes had as their banner, "God never made a tyrant or a 
slave;" along with a company of thirty-eight negroes went 
the banner, "Liberty throughout all the world." Mottoes 
at Batavia, New York, were: "Opposition to the extension 
of slavery in the territories;" "Protection to American 
industries;" "Equal privileges for all citizens;" "Home- 
steads for all actual settlers;" "River and harbor improve- 
ments;" "Do not destroy that immortal charter of hberty, 
the Declaration of Independence;" "Champions of free- 
dom." At Syracuse, New York: "The Repubhcan plat- 
form : to man, his birthright ; to labor, freedom ; to him that 
wants to labor, work and independence ; to him that works, 
his dues ;" Douglas was pictured riding on the black horse of 
the South, and the white horse of the North, the horses part, 
and with one hand pointing to the Dred Scott decision and 
the other to popular sovereignty Douglas cries: "Oh! my 
platform;" a plantation scene, with an overseer, whip in 
hand, was placarded: "Bad for America;" "Protection to 
American Industries ;" "Abraham Lincoln does care whether 
slavery is voted up or voted down ; " "Lincoln and free home- 
steads." At Springfield, Illinois: "Pass the homestead 
bill and that will settle the slavery question;" "Illinois 
railmakers will fence in the niggers;" "Free labor elevates, 
slave labor degrades;" "United we stand, divided we fall; " 
"Followers of Henry Clay, the man who did care;" "Old 
Abe, one of Hammond's mudsills;" "That 160 acres we 
must have;" "We do care whether slavery is voted up or 
voted down." 



228 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN ^ 

The procession at this great meeting in Springfield was 
unique. It stretched for eight miles and was many hours 
in passing Lincoln's home; thousands were on foot, on 
horses, and in wagons. One hundred and three wagons 
carried twelve hundred persons from the surrounding towns. 
In imitation of the overland travelers to the far West, the 
farmers had fitted up their wagons with bedding, cooking 
utensils, and food, and bringing the whole family had come 
in from miles around ; the custom dated back to 1840. In 
each delegation there was generally one wagon gayly deco- 
rated and filled with young ladies, clad in white dresses; 
there were couples of ladies and gentlemen on gayly capari- 
soned horses, there were flatboats and schooners, and 
finally a woolen mill making clothes in the procession and 
bearing the inscription: ''Protection to American Indus- 
tries." 1 

The Democrats did not dare to copy the magnificently 
successful society of the RepubUcans, but they had their 
marching clubs known under various names, such as the 
''Ever Readys," "Little Giants," "Invincibles," "Douglas 
guards," etc. The following were displayed at Washington, 
D.C., as Breckenridge mottoes: "Democracy is good for 
all;" "Let millions join in the loud refrain, 'Hurrah for 
Breckenridge and Lane';" "No rail party or union spHt- 
ters;" "Cuba must be ours;" "Iron bands shall soon unite 
the Atlantic with the Pacific;" "Breckenridge, the man of 
destiny." In the fusion parade in New York, participated 
in by thirty thousand marchers and requiring three hours 
to pass a single point, were the following: "No North, no 
South, no East, no West;" "The Whole Union;" "The 
Union must and shall be preserved;" "Black Republicans 
at war with every principle of the constitution ; " "We want 
none but white men at the helm;" "United we stand, di- 

1 The Weekly Illinois State Journal, Springfield, Illinois, August lo, 
1860. 



LEADERS AND CONDUCT OF THE CAMPAIGN 229 

vided we fall;" "No rail splitter can split this Union;" 
''Too late for the Black Repubhcans to alter the constitu- 
tion;" "We want a statesman, not a rail spUtter as presi- 
dent;" "The Union and the Constitution;" ''We will 
defend the Union or die in the last ditch;" "Down with 
the Black Repubhcan flag of Disunion;" "No niggers are 
allowed in this club ;" "I see the nigger peeping through the 
fence;" "Billy Seward and his three aunties, Aunty Mason, 
Aunty Rent, and Aunty Slavery." ^ Douglas mottoes at 
St. Louis read : "We will march to the music of the Union ;" 
"Popular sovereignty, the great bulwark of American 
Independence;" "We are opposed to all sectional parties;" 
"The Union must and shall be preserved;" "Douglas, the 
great defender of the rights of the people." At the Douglas 
parade in Belleville, Illinois, there were the usual decorated 
wagons, bands of music and flaming banners. One wagon 
was a model of the ship Constitution, twenty feet long, fully 
rigged and manned by thirteen boys; another bore officers 
and soldiers of the war of 1812, a third the heroes of the 
battle of Buena Vista. Three different towns were repre- 
sented by delegations of thirty-three ladies on horseback, 
each clad in blue skirt and white waist, and with a brown 
straw hat trimmed in red, white, and blue, to typify the 
sisterhood of the states. ^ 

Southerners affected to construe the existence of the Wide 
Awakes into a military menace to their section ; the mihtary 
discipline practiced, the order, the drill, and the marching, 
were only in preparation for the defense of Lincoln's inaugu- 
ration and of the North in general, when it came to blows.^ 

1 The New York Herald, October 24, 1860. 

2 The Daily Missouri Republican, August 23, 1860. The same, October 
2, 1860, contains a take-off on the names of the Republican candidates, 
arranged thus, 

Ham lin Hum bug 
Lin coin Bug bear. 
' The New York Times, September 29, 1860, quoting the Charleston 
Mercury and the Richmond Enquirer. 



230 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

Late in the campaign appeared the Southern imitation, the 
Minute Men, a society that extended rapidly in many states. 
The constitution of one of these societies at Edgefield, South 
Carohna, ran in the preamble as follows: "We, the under- 
signed, citizens of South Carohna, in view of the impending 
crisis necessarily incident upon the election of a Black Re- 
publican to the presidency of these United States, and in 
view of our duties to our section, ourselves, and our dearest 
interests, which must fall in the event of the triumph of 
Northern fanaticism, hereby form ourselves into an asso- 
"qiation, under the name and style of Minute Men, and we 
do further solemnly pledge 'our lives, our fortunes, and our 
sacred honor' to sustain Southern constitutional equahty 
in the Union, or faiUng that, to establish our independence 
out of it." 1 

In the Democratic papers the emblem of that party was 
a rooster. The elephant of the Repubhcans was not yet 
prominent, though in the West at least the idea was not un- 
famiUar to the party leaders. At the head of the column 
of RepubHcan news one western paper pictured an elephant 
and the inscription, ''Clear the track." ^ The streets of the 
cities in all sections were strung with banners- and hke- 
nesses of the different candidates. Pole-raisings and flag- 
raisings were common. The present charges as to the 
corrupt use of money in a presidential campaign were prac- 
tically unknown, as was also campaign violence. Occa- 
sionally a marching club would be set upon by rowdies ; a 
Republican newspaper in Missouri was forcibly suppressed ; 
but such acts were few. 

Contemporaries seemed to agree in the judgment that 
the campaign was not exceedingly exciting and they were 
correspondingly surprised. The New York World deemed 
it the tamest presidential contest since the second election 

1 The New York Herald, November 5, 1860. 

* The Weekly Illinois State Journal, August 15, 1860. 



LEADERS AND CONDUCT OF THE CAMPAIGN 231 

of Monroe ; the New York Evening Post spoke of the calm 
and quiet of it ; Greeley declared it was not so noisy as the 
campaigns of 1840 and 1856. Reasons for this were obvious. 
Enthusiasm for human hberty, which in 1856 convulsed the 
public mind and turned preachers into campaign speakers, 
was indeed as strong as ever, but with the assurance of 
victory, revolutionary methods to arouse the public mind 
were no longer necessary. So truly was it a contest of 
principle, that offensive personahties, which usually lead to 
excitement, were comparatively conspicuous for their ab- 
sence. Harrison was attacked as a coward and as a dotard, 
Clay was accused of every crime in the decalogue. Pierce 
was held up to ridicule as a white-hvered coward, Scott as a 
poor general, cruel, and corrupt, Fremont as guilty of every 
crime ; but little of this now attached to Lincoln, Douglas, 
Breckenridge, or Bell ; indeed. President Buchanan's char- 
acter was blackened more than that of any of the candi- 
dates. The factional fight of the Democrats led the parti- 
sans of that party to train on one another the guns that 
otherwise they might have leveled at the Repubhcans.^ 
It was not a man-worshipping struggle. Probably a ma- 
jority of the Republicans wanted another candidate; they 
loved Lincoln now, but they had learned to love him for his 
principles before they were taught to love him for himself. 
In some campaigns, admiration for a hero had been the guid- 
ing motive, but now it was love of principle. The cam- 
paign had not been waged on any of the supposed defects of 
the opposing candidates as leading issues. The Republicans 
could say to all the candidates, "We have done you no harm 
before the people ;" public life had been fought, not personal 
integrity and worth. No party said, "The opposing can- 
didate is unworthy, therefore give us the election." Greeley 

^ The New York Independent, August 2, 1860 ; the New York World, 
August 12 and 23, and September 26, 1860; the New York Semi- Weekly 
Evening Post, August 1, 1860. 



232 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

believed that there had been as many campaign speeches in 
1860 as before from 1789 to 1860. It was preeminently a 
campaign of education. Many men spoke every day for 
two or three months ; ten thousand set speeches were made 
for Lincohi in New York State alone, fifty thousand through- 
out the Union. There was a very general enhstment of the 
mercantile or capitaUst class in the fusion and Democratic 
cause, for the men of property and business were afraid of 
disunion and of the financial loss that it might entail. This 
fear grew as the day of the election drew near, until by 
November 6 all the conditions were prepared for the sudden 
precipitation of a financial panic, if any untoward result was 
declared at the polls. , The attitude of the commercial classes 
was a salient feature of the situation, as nothing like it had 
existed since the bank contest of the thirties. There had 
been more exciting, enthusiastic, and demonstrative cam- 
paigns, but none in which a larger number of men took a 
more sober interest, none in which the pubhc mind was 
better educated.^ 

How the vote would go never once seemed in doubt. 
Throughout, the Republicans were sanguine of success, the 
Democrats discouraged and expecting defeat. In August 
early fall state elections took place in North Carohna, 
Arkansas, Texas, Missouri, and Kentucky, unimportant 
except as indicating the bitterness of the struggle in the 
slave states between Bell and Breckenridge ; plainly as 
the campaign progressed the Constitutional Unionists be- 
came stronger and stronger in the South and would push the 
Breckenridge Democracy very hard in the final contest. 
September elections in Vermont and Maine confirmed the 
Republicans in their hopes, and October elections in Penn- 
sylvania, Ohio, and Indiana sealed everything as a great 
and sweeping Republican victory. North and South alike 
now conceded the success of Lincoln. At Cedar Rapids, 

1 The New York Tribune, November 8 and 9, 1860. 



LEADERS AND CONDUCT OF THE CAMPAIGN 233 

Iowa, hearing of the October results, Douglas is said to have 
remarked to his secretary: ''Mr. Lincoln is the next Presi- 
dent. We must try to save the Union. I will go South." ^ 
/^^incoln received 1,857,610 popular votes, Douglas 
1,365,967, Breckenridge 847,953, and Bell 590,631 ; in the 
electoral colleges there were 180 votes for Lincoln, 12 for 
Douglas, 39 for Bell, and 72 for Breckenridge. Fusion was 
defeated in New York by 47,000, in Pennsylvania by 75,000, 
and in Rhode Island by 5000; in New Jersey, where the 
fusionists won, they were not loyally supported by the 
Douglasites, so that the result there was three electoral votes 
for Douglas and four for Lincoln.^ In the Southern states 
Lincoln received 17,000 votes in Missouri, 1300 in Ken- 
tucky, 3800 in Delaware, 2300 in Maryland, and 1900 in 
Virginia, not a vote in all the remainder of the South. Al- 
most as meager was the Breckenridge Northern vote, 2400 
in Ilhnois, 1000 in Iowa, 900 in Wisconsin, 12,000 in Indiana, 
11,000 in Ohio, 16,000 in Connecticut, 6000 in Massachu- 
setts, 21,000 in New Hampshire, 6000 in Maine, and 200 in 
Vermont. Some states were very close. Douglas won 
Missouri by 429 over Bell, Bell Virginia by 358 over Breck- 
enridge, Breckenridge Louisiana by 2400 over Bell, Breck- 
enridge Maryland by 700 over Bell, Lincoln California by 
650 over Douglas, and Lincoln Oregon by 260 over Breck- 
enridge. Of the large cities, New York went against Lincoln 
for fusion by 30,000, Philadelphia for Lincoln by 1000, Chi- 
cago for Lincoln by 5000, and St. Louis for Lincoln by 700.^ 

^ The History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, by 
Henry Wilson, Boston, 1872-1877, II, 699-700. According to Wilson, 
Douglas in the early summer in New York conceded Lincoln's election 
privately to his Republican friends. 

2 That is, the Douglasites voted for their own three men on the fusion 
ticket, but refused to vote for the four representing the other parties to 
the fusion ; undoubtedly, many of the Douglas men scratched the names 
of the four and voted rather in favor of the Lincoln electors. 

' These figures are taken from the New York Tribune Almanac. 



234 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

William Cullen Bryant, poet and editor of the New York 
Evening Post, amid marvelous enthusiasm at the New York 
jubilee meeting, celebrated the RepubUcan triumph by the 
following notable speech: "My friends, great motives have 
called us together this evening. We are assembled to cele- 
brate an important moral and political victory, one of the 
most important, it seems to me, that has ever been achieved. 
The youngest of those who now hsten to me may hve to the 
middle of the next century, and yet never witness an elec- 
tion so pregnant with great results as that which has been 
held. We now stand upon the battlefield of the great con- 
test, while around us and before us he the carcasses of the 
slain. At our feet, conquered, hes that great ohgarchy 
which has so long held the South through submission and 
fear, and has ruled the North through the treachery of 
Northern men ; and has tyrannized equally over both. You, 
my friends, animated by the generous impulses of your time 
of life, have aided to deal the terrible blow that has stretched 
the creature on the earth. It lies before us, horrible and 
ghastly, with its head severed from its huge trunk, and with 
all its members dissevered; lifeless and dead it now Ues 
there, and from that death there is no resurrection. A new 
era is now inaugurated, the old order of things has passed 
away, never, we hope, to return. A new order of things is 
begun, and there will be no more attempts to force by blood 
and violence, upon the peaceful inhabitants of an unoffend- 
ing territory, a barbarous institution, which they indig- 
nantly repel and utterly abhor. There will be no more 
attempts to wrest from their owners any neighboring terri- 
tory for the purpose of despotism, and no more attempts 
to revive that thing, accursed of God and man, the execrable 
slave trade. There will be no longer any daring violations 
and defiances of the law by which that execrable traffic is 
prohibited. There will be no more attempts to purchase 
members of Congress, and buy of them enactments of laws 



LEADERS AND CONDUCT OF THE CAMPAIGN 235 

which their own consciences disapprove. For the part 
which you have taken in the inauguration of this new system 
your own conscience must applaud you. You have not Us- 
tened to the mean and selfish suggestions of interest, or to 
the counsels of craven and abject fear, and have put your 
hearts into the contest and into your acts, as your consciences 
have dictated, and your own consciences will furnish you a 
sufficient reward. And I exhort you, whenever you are 
tempted by sordid self-interest, or by the counsels of coward- 
ice, to swerve from the dictates of conscience and the law of 
duty, to remember how you have acted on this occasion, and 
let that remembrance strengthen and confirm your virtue. 
I have been long an observer of public fife, but never in 
public life ; and never have I seen any course of right steadily 
pursued without public opinion coming round to that course 
and crowning those that pursued it with glory and triumph. 
This cloud, which now bursts with fertilizing showers over 
the whole land, I remember many years since, a httle speck 
in the firmament, no bigger than a man's hand; slowly it 
enlarged itself, and then with greater rapidity, until it 
now fills the whole heaven, shedding down abundance over 
the hills and thirsty valleys, till the dry fields are filled with 
abundant moisture ; and you, my friends, will now reap the 
harvest of hberty and peace." ^ 

1 The New York Tribune, November 9, 1860. 



■^'^ 



b 



APPENDIX A 

THE PARTY PLATFORMS » 

I. Republican Platform 

"Resolved, That we, the delegated representatives of the Re- 
pubhcan electors of the United States, in convention assembled, 
in discharge of the duty we owe to our constituents and our coun- 
try, unite in the following declarations : — 

"1. That the history of the nation, during the last four years, 
has fully estabhshed the propriety and necessity of the organiza- 
tion and perpetuation of the Republican party, and that the 
causes which called it into existence are permanent in their nature, 
and now, more than ever before, demand its peaceful and constitu- 
tional triumph. 

"2. That the maintenance of the principles promulgated in the 
Declaration of Independence and embodied in the Federal con- 
stitution —' that all men are created equal ; that they are endowed 
by their Creator with certain unalienable rights ; that among these 
are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ; that, to secure these 
rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their 
just powers from the consent of the governed' — is essential to 
the preservation of our republican institutions; and that the 
Federal constitution, the rights of the states, and the union of the 
states must and shall be preserved. 

''3. That to the union of the states this nation owes its unpre- 
cedented increase in population, its surprising development of 
material resources, its rapid augmentation of wealth, its happiness 
at home, and its honor abroad; and we hold in abhorrence all 
schemes for disunion, come from whatever source they may; 
and we congratulate the country that no Republican member of 

' These platforms are taken from A History of the Presidency, by Edward Stanwood, 
Boston and New York, 1898. 

237 



238 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

Congress has uttered or countenanced the threats of disunion 
so often made by Democratic members, without rebuke and with 
applause from their pohtical associates ; and we denounce those 
threats of disunion, in case of a popular overthrow of their ascen- 
dency, as denying the vital principles of a free government, and 
as an avowal of contemplated treason, which it is the imperative 
duty of an indignant people sternly to rebuke and forever silence. 

"4. That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the states, 
and especially the right of each state to order and control its own 
domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, 
is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and 
endurance of our political fabric depends; and we denounce the 
lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any state or territory, 
no matter under what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes. 

"5. That the present Democratic administration has far ex- 
ceeded our worst apprehensions, in its measureless subserviency 
to the exactions of a sectional interest, as especially evinced in its 
desperate exertions to force the infamous Lecompton constitution 
upon the protesting people of Kansas ; in construing the personal 
relation between master and servant to involve an unquahfied 
property in person ; in its attempted enforcement, everywhere, on 
land and sea, through the intervention of Congress and of the 
Federal courts, of the extreme pretensions of a purely local in- 
terest; and in its general and unvarying abuse of the power 
intrusted to it by a confiding people. 

"6. That the people justly view with alarm the reckless ex- 
travagance which pervades every department of the Federal gov- 
ernment ; that a return to rigid economy and accountability is 
indispensable to arrest the systematic plunder of the public treas- 
ury by favored partisans ; while the recent startling developments 
of fraud and corruptions at the Federal metropolis show that an 
entire change of administration is imperatively demanded. 

"7. That the dogma that the constitution, of its own force, 
carries slavery into any or all of the territories of the United States, 
is a dangerous political heresy, at variance with the explicit pro- 
visions of that instrument itself, with contemporaneous exposition, 
and with legislative and judicial precedent; is revolutionary in its 
tendency, and subversive of the peace and harmony of the country. 



THE PARTY PLATFORMS 239 

k "8. That the normal condition of all the territory of the United 

p, States is that of freedom ; that as our Republican fathers, when 

I t they had aboHshed slavery in all our national territory, ordained 

1^' that no person should be deprived of hfe, liberty, or property 

p without due process of law, it becomes our duty, by legislation, 

^ whenever such legislation is necessary, to maintain this provision 

of the constitution against all attempts to violate it ; and we deny 

the authority of Congress, of a territorial legislature, or of any 

individual, to give legal existence to slavery in any territory of 

the United States. 

"9. That we brand the recent reopening of the African slave 
trade, under the cover of the national flag, aided by pervasions of 
the judicial power, as a crime against humanity, and a burning 
shame to our country and age ; and we call upon Congress to take 
prompt and efficient measures for the total and final suppression 
of that execrable traffic. 

"10. That in the recent vetoes, by their Federal governors, of 
the acts of the legislatures of Kansas and Nebraska, prohibiting 
slavery in those territories, we find a practical illustration of the 
boasted Democratic principle of nonintervention and popular 
sovereignty, embodied in the Kansas-Nebraska bill, and a demon- 
stration of the deception and fraud involved therein. 

"11. That Kansas should of right be immediately admitted as 
a state under the constitution recently formed and adopted by 

(her people and accepted by the House of Representatives. 
"12. That, while providing revenue for the support of the 
general government by duties upon imports, sound policy requires 
such an adjustment of these imposts as to encourage the develop- 
ment of the industrial interests of the whole country; and we 
I commend that policy of national exchanges which secures to the 
working men liberal wages, to agriculture remunerating prices, to 
mechanics and manufacturers an adequate reward for their skill, 
labor, and enterprise, and to the nation commercial prosperity and 
independence. 

"13. That we protest against any sale or alienation to others 
of the public lands held by actual settlers, and against any view 
of the free homestead policy which regards the settlers as paupers 
or suppliants for public bounty ; and we demand the passage by 



240 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

Congress of the complete and satisfactory homestead measure 
which has already passed the house. 

"14. That the Republican party is opposed to any change in 
our naturalization laws, or any state legislation by which the rights 
of citizenship hitherto accorded to immigrants from foreign lands 
shall be abridged or impaired ; and in favor of giving a full and 
efficient protection to the rights of all classes of citizens, whether 
native or naturalized, both at home and abroad. 

"15. That appropriations by Congress for river and harbor 
improvements of a national character, required for the accommo- 
dation and security of our existing commerce, are authorized by 
the constitution, and justified by the obligations of government 
to protect the lives and property of its citizens. 

"16. That a railroad to the Pacific Ocean is imperatively de- 
manded by the interests of the whole country ; that the Federal 
government ought to render immediate and efficient aid in its 
construction ; and that, as a preliminary thereto, a daily overland 
mail should be immediately estabhshed. 

"17. Finally, having thus set forth our distinctive principles 
and views, we invite the cooperation of all citizens, however differ- 
ing on other questions, who substantially agree with us in their 
affirmance and support." 

II. Democratic Platform (Douglas) 

"1. Resolved, That we, the Democracy of the Union, in con- 
vention assembled, hereby declare our affirmance of the resolu- 
tions unanimously adopted and declared as a platform of principles 
by the Democratic convention at Cincinnati in the year 1856, 
believing that Democratic principles are unchangeable in their 
nature when applied to the same subject matters ; and we recom- 
mend as the only further resolutions the following : — 

"Inasmuch as differences of opinion exist in the Democratic 
party as to the nature and extent of the powers of a territorial 
legislature, and as to the powers and duties of Congress, under the 
Constitution of the United States, over the institution of slavery 
in the territories, — 

"2. Resolved, That the Democratic party will abide by the 



THE PARTY PLATFORMS 241 

decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States on the ques- 
tions of constitutional law. 

''3. Resolved, That it is the duty of the United States to afford 
ample and complete protection to all its citizens, whether at home 
or abroad, and whether native or foreign. 

"4. Resolved, That one of the necessities of the age, in a mili- 
tary, commercial, and postal point of view, is speedy communica- 
tion between the Atlantic and the Pacific states ; and the Demo- 
cratic party pledge such constitutional government aid as will 
insure the construction of a railroad to the Pacific coast at the 
earhest practicable period. 

"5. Resolved, That the Democratic party are in favor of the 
acquisition of the island of Cuba, on such terms as shall be honor- 
able to ourselves and just to Spain. 

"6. Resolved, That the enactments of state legislatures to de- 
feat the faithful execution of the fugitive slave law are hostile in 
character, subversive of the Constitution, and revolutionary in 
their effects. 

"7. (Added at the Baltimore convention.) Resolved, That it is 
in accordance with the interpretation of the Cincinnati platform 
that, during the existence of the territorial governments, the meas- 
ure of restriction, whatever it may be, imposed by the Federal 
Constitution on the power of the territorial legislature over the 
subject of the domestic relations, as the same has been, or shall 
hereafter be, finally determined by the Supreme Court of the 
United States, should be respected by all good citizens, and en- 
forced with promptness and fidelity by every branch of the Federal 
government." 

III. Democratic Platform (Breckenridge) 

'^Resolved, That the platform adopted by the Democratic party 
at Cincinnati be affirmed, wi':h the following explanatory resolu- 
tions : — 

''1. That the government of a territory organized by an act of 
Congress is provisional and temporary ; and, during its existence, 
all citizens of the United States have an equal right to settle with 
their property in the territory, without their rights, either of person 

K 



242 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

or of property, being destroyed or impaired by congressional 
legislation. 

"2. That it is the duty of the Federal government, in all its 
departments, to protect, when necessary, the rights of persons and 
property in the territories, and wherever else its constitutional 
authority extends. 

"3. That when the settlers in a territory, having an adequate 
population, form a state constitution, the right of sovereignty 
commences, and, being consummated by admission into the 
Union, they stand on an equal footing with the people of the other 
states; and the state thus organized ought to be admitted into 
the Federal Union, whether its constitution prohibits or recog- 
nizes the institution of slavery. 

"4. That the Democratic party are in favor of the acquisition 
of the island of Cuba, on such terms as shall be honorable to our- 
selves and just to Spain, at the earliest practicable moment. 

"5. That the enactments of state legislatures to defeat the 
faithful execution of the fugitive slave law are hostile in character, 
subversive of the constitution, and revolutionary in effect. 

"6. That the Democracy of the United States recognize it as 
the imperative duty of this government to protect the naturalized 
citizen in all his rights, whether at home or in foreign lands, to 
the same extent as its native-born citizens. 

^'Whereas, one of the greatest necessities of the age, in a pohtical 
commercial, postal, and mihtary point of view, is a speedy com- 
munication between the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, 

"Therefore be it resolved, That the Democratic party do hereby 
pledge themselves to use every means in their power to secure the 
passage of some bills, to the extent of the constitutional authority 
of Congress, for the construction of a Pacific railroad from the 
Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, at the earliest practicable 
moment." 

IV. Constitutional Union Platform 

" Whereas, Experience has demonstrated that platforms adopted 
by the partisan conventions of the country have had the effect to 
mislead and deceive the people, and at the same time to widen the 



THE PARTY PLATFORMS 243 

political divisions of the country by the creation and encourage- 
ment of geographical and sectional parties, therefore, — 

"Resolved, That it is both the part of patriotism and of duty 
to recognize no political principle other than the Constitution of 
the country, the union of the states, and the enforcement of the 
laws, and that, as representatives of the constitutional Union men 
of the country in national convention assembled, we hereby 
pledge ourselves to maintain, protect, and defend, separately 
and unitedly, these great principles of public liberty and national 
safety, against all enemies at home and abroad, believing that 
thereby peace may once more be restored to the country, the rights 
of the people, and of the states reestablished, and the govern- 
ment again placed in that condition of justice, fraternity, and 
equality, which, under the example and Constitution of our fathers, 
has solemnly bound every citizen of the United States to main- 
tain a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tran- 
quillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general 
welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our 
posterity." 



APPENDIX B 

REPUBLICAN SPEECH BY CARL SCHURZ, ST. LOUIS, 
MISSOURI, AUGUST 1, 1860 ^ 

"Mr. President and Gentlemen: To deny the existence of 
an evil they do not mean to remedy, to ascribe to paltry causes the 
origin of great problems they do not mean to solve, to charge those 
who define the nature of an existing evil, with having originated 
it, these are expedients which the opponents of reformatory move- 
ments have resorted to since mankind has a history. An appeal 
to ignorance or timidity is their last hope, when all resources of 
logic and argument are exhausted. The old comedy is repeated 
again and again. 

"The assertions that the great contest between free and slave 
labor has no foundation in fact, that the origin of the slavery 
controversy is to be found in the fanaticism of a few Northern 
abolitionists, and that those who speak of an ' irrepressible conflict ' 
are to be made responsible for its existence, these form the argu- 
mentative staple of those who possess either not sagacity enough 
to discern, or not courage enough to state facts as they are. 

"In investigating the causes of the great struggle which has for 
years kept the minds of the people in constant uneasiness and 
excitement, I shall endeavor to act with the most perfect fairness. 
I will not indulge in any denunciations. I shall impeach the 
motives of no one. I shall not appeal to prejudice or passion. 
I invite you to pass in review the actual state of things with calm- 
ness and impartiality. 

"It is one of the best traits of human nature that we form our 
first opinions on matters of general interest from our innate sense 
of right and wrong. Our moral impressions, the dictates of our 
consciences, the generous impulses of our hearts, are the sources 

^From a contemporary pamphlet; Yale University Political Pamphlets, Vol. 17. 
244 



REPUBLICAN SPEECH BY CARL SCHURZ 245 

from which our first convictions spring. But custom, material 
interest, and our natural inclination to acquiesce in that which 
is, whether right or wrong, that vis inertice which has brought so 
much suffering upon humanity, are apt to overrule the native 
instincts of our moral nature. They are sicklied over by the pale 
cast of calculation ; the freshness of their impeUing power is lost, 
and questions essentially moral are imperceptibly changed into 
questions of material interest, national economy, or political 
power. 

"The people of the South have evidently gone through that 
process in regard to the institution of slavery ; they have become 
accustomed to identify its existence with the existence of South- 
ern society, while even a large majority of the people of the North 
were rather inchned to silence their moral objections to it, and to 
acquiesce, until its immediate interference with matters of general 
interest gave a new impulse to their native antipathy. Although 
I am not ashamed to confess, that the moral merits of the ques- 
tion would alone have been more than sufficient to make me an 
antislavery man, yet I will confine myself to a discussion of its 
practical effects, in order to make myself intelligible even to those 
who do not sympathize with me. This is the first time that I 
have had the honor to address a meeting in a slave state, and even 
now I owe the privilege of expressing my opinions freely and with- 
out restraint to the circumstance that, although in a slave state, 
I stand upon the soil of a free city, and under the generous pro- 
tection of free men. (Applause.) Must I call a privilege what 
ought to be universally respected as the sacred birthright of every 
American citizen? Ask any slaveholder who may be present 
in this vast assembly whether he does not deem it wrong and 
unjustifiable that I, an antislavery man, should be permitted to 
give a public expression of my views in a slave state? whether 
he would not be in favor of silencing me by whatever means 
within his reach ? whether I would not be silenced at once in a 
strong slaveholding community? I do not mean to blame him 
for it. Let us give him a fair hearing. The slaveholder will 
state his political views substantially as follows : ' On the point 
of astronomy, or chemistry, or medicine, you may entertain what- 
ever opinion you please; but we cannot permit you to discuss the 



246 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

relation of master and servant, as it exists here in the slave state, 
for in doing so you would endanger our safety and under our 
social system. Our condition is such that the slightest movement 
of insubordination once started, is apt to grow with uncontrollable 
rapidity; we have, therefore, to guard against everything that 
may start it; we cannot allow free discussion of the subject; we 
have to remove from our midst every incendiary element; we 
cannot be expected to tolerate opinions of persons among us that 
are opposed to the ruling order of things. Whenever a mis- 
chievous attempt is made, we are obliged to repress it with 
such energy and severity as to strike terror into the hearts 
of those who might be capable of repeating the attempt. Our 
condition requires the promptest action, and if, in cases of immi- 
nent danger, the regular process of the courts is too slow or uncer- 
tain, we are obliged to resort to lynch law in order to supply its 
deficiencies. s. ' 

"'Moreover, we must adapt our rules and customs of govern- 
ment to the peculiar wants of our social organization. In order 
to be safe, we must intrust the government in its general admin- 
istration as well as in details to those who, by their own interests, 
are bound to be the natural guardians of the system. Hence our 
safety requires that the political power in our states should be 
put into the hands of the slaveholders ; and where we have no law 
to that effect, custom upholds the rule. 

"'In order to put the political ascendency of those who are 
most interested in the preservation of slavery upon a solid basis, 
we must put down everything that would produce and foster inde- 
pendent aspirations among the other classes of society. It would 
not only be insane to educate the slaves, but highly dangerous to 
extend to the great mass of poor white nonslaveholders the means 
of education; for in doing so we might raise an element to in- 
fluence and power whose interests are not identical with those of 
the slaveholder. This is our policy of self-preservation, and we 
are bound to enforce it.' 

"Sir, I mean to be just to the slaveholders, and, strange as it 
may sound, as to the propriety of their policy, I agree with them. 
Having identified their social existence with the existence of 
slavery, they cannot act otherwise. 



REPUBLICAN SPEECH BY CARL SCHURZ 247 

"It is necessity that urges them on. It is true that slavery is 
an inflammable element. A stray spark of thought or hope may 
cause a terrible conflagration. The torch of free speech or press, 
which gives light to the house of liberty, is very apt to set on fire 
the house of slavery. What is more natural than that the torch 
should be extinguished, where there is such an abundance of ex- 
plosive material ? 

"It is true, that in a slaveholding community the strictest 
subordination must be enforced, that the maintenance of estab- 
lished order requires the most rigorous, preventive, and repressive 
measures, which will not always allow of the strict observance of 
the rules of legal process ; it is equally true that the making and 
the execution of the laws can be safely intrusted to those who, 
by their position, are bound to the ruling interest ; true that popu- 
lar education is dangerous to the rule of an exclusive class ; true 
that men must be kept stupid to be kept obedient. What is more 
consistent, therefore, than that the fundamental liberties should 
be disregarded whenever they become dangerous ; that the safe- 
guards of human rights in the administration should be set aside 
whenever the emergency calls for prompt and energetic action; 
that the masses should be left uneducated, in order to give the 
slaveholding oligarchy an undisputed sway? In one word, that 
the rights, the liberties, and the security of the individual should 
have to yield to the paramount considerations of the safety of 
the ruling interest ? All this is true ; and accepting the premises, 
all these necessities exist. You seem startled at this proposition 
and ask, what is the institution that demands for its protection 
such measures? The slave states are by no means original in 
this respect. Look at the kingdom of Naples, where the ruling 
power is governed by similar exclusive interests, and acts on the 
same instinct of self-preservation ; does it not resort to the same 
means? You tell me that the principles underlying our system 
of government are very different from those of the kingdom of 
Naples, and that the means of protection I spoke of run contrary 
to the spirit of our institutions. Indeed, so it seems to me. What 
does that prove ? Simply this : That a social system which is 
in antagonism with the principles of democratic government, can- 
not be maintained and protected by means which are in accord- 



248 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

ance with those principles ; and, on the other hand, that a social 
system that cannot be protected by means that are in accordance 
with the democratic principles of our government, must essen- 
tially be in antagonism to those principles. It proves that the 
people in the slavcholding states, although pretending to be free 
men, are, by the necessities arising from their condition, the slaves 
of slavery. That is all. 

" But I am told that the slave states are sovereign, and may 
shape and govern their home concerns according to their own 
notions, subject only to the Constitution of the United States. 
Granted. But the necessities of slavery do not stop there. The 
slave states are members of a Federal family, and as the King 
of Naples in his foreign policy is governed by his peculiar interests, 
so is the policy of the slave states in our Federal affairs governed 
by their peculiar necessities. 

"I hear much said of the aggressive spirit of the slave power, 
but I am incHned to acquit it of that charge, for all its apparently 
aggressive attempts are no less dictated by the instinct of self- 
preservation, than the most striking features of its home policy. 

"Let us listen to the slaveholder again. He says: 'What will 
become of the security of our slave property, if inside of this union 
a slave may finally escape from the hands of his master, by simply 
crossing the line of his state? But the fanatical antislavery 
spirit prevailing in the free states, will avail itself of every facility 
the common legal process affords, as the trial by jury and the writ 
of habeas corpus, to aid the fugitive in his escape. We are, there- 
fore, obliged to demand such legislation at the hands of the general 
government, as will remove these obstacles thrown in the way of 
the recapture of our property, and oblige the citizens, by law, to 
assist us in the re-apprehension of the fugitive, so the trial by jury 
and the writ of habeas corpus will have to yield, and the good old 
common law principle, that in all cases concerning life and property 
the presumption be in favor of liberty, goes by the board. This 
may seem rather hard, but is it not eminently consistent?' 

"The necessities of slavery do not stop there. Let us hear how 
the slaveholder proceeds. * In order to obtain such legislation from 
our national councils, it is necessary that the prejudices against 
slavery existing in the free states be disarmed. It is impossible 



REPUBLICAN SPEECH BY CARL SCHURZ 249 

that the slave interest deem itself secure as long as a violent agita- 
tion is kept up against it, which continually troubles us at home, 
and exercises upon the national legislature an influence hostile 
to slavery. We are, therefore, obliged to demand that measures 
be taken to stop that agitation.' Nothing more natural than that. 
The right of petition, held sacred even by some despotic govern- 
ments, must be curtailed. Post ofhce regulations must prevent 
the dissemination of antislavery sentiments by the newspapers. 
Even in the free states wiUing instruments are found, who urge 
the adoption of measures tending to suppress the very discussion 
of this question. Laws are advocated in Congress (and that 
'champion of free labor' Douglas, takes the lead), making it a 
criminal offense to organize associations hostile to slavery, and 
empowering the general government to suppress them by means of 
a centralized police. {Loud cheers.) This may seem somewhat 
tyrannical, but is it not eminently consistent? {Applause.) 

"But in order to succeed in this, slavery needs a controlling 
power in the general government. It cannot expect to persuade 
us, so it must try to subdue and rule us. Hear the slaveholder : 
'It is impossible that we should consider our interests safe in this 
union, unless the political equilibrium between the free and the 
slave states be restored. If the free states are permitted to grow 
and the slave states stand still, we shall be completely at the 
mercy of a hostile majority. We are, therefore, obliged to de- 
mand accessions of territory out of which new slave states can be 
formed, so as to increase our representation in Congress, and to 
restore the equilibrium of power.' Nothing more sensible. The 
acquisition of foreign countries, such as Cuba and the Northern 
states of Mexico, is demanded ; and, if they cannot be obtained 
by fair purchase and diplomatic transaction, war must be resorted 
to ; and, if the majority of the people are not inclined to go to war, 
our international relations must be disturbed by filibustering 
expeditions, precipitating, if possible, this country into wars, 
thus forcing the peaceable or cheating the enthusiastic into sub- 
serviency to the plans of the slave power. You may call this 
piracy, disgracing us in the eyes of the civilized world. But can 
you deny that slavery needs power, and that it cannot obtain 
that power except by extension? 



250 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

" So, pressed by its necessities, it lays its hand upon our national 
territories. Time-honored compacts, hemming in slavery, must 
be abrogated. The Constitution must be so construed as to give 
slavery unlimited sway over our national domain. Hence your 
Nebraska bills and Dred Scott decisions, and slave code platforms. 
You may call that atrocious, but can you deny its consistency ? 

"'But,' adds the slaveholder, 'of what use to us is the abstract 
right to go with our slave property into the territories, if you 
pass laws which attract to the territories a class of population that 
will crowd out slavery ? if you attract to them the foreign im- 
migrant by granting to him the immediate enjoyment of political 
rights? if you allure the paupers from all parts of the globe by 
your preemption laws and homestead bills ? We want the negro 
in the territories. You give us the foreign immigrant. Slavery 
cannot exist except with the system of large farms, and your home- 
stead bills establish the system of small farms, with which free 
labor is inseparably connected. We are, therefore, obliged to 
demand that all such mischievous projects be abandoned.' Noth- 
ing more plausible. Hence the right of the laboring man to ac- 
quire property in the soil by his labor is denied ; your homestead 
bills voted down ; the blight of oppressive speculation fastened 
on your virgin soil, and attempts are made to deprive the foreign 
immigrant in the territories of the immediate enjojTnent of political 
rights, which in the primitive state of social organization are essen- 
tial to his existence. All this in order to give slavery a chance to 
obtain possession of our national domain. This may seem rather 
hard. But can you deny that slavery for its own protection needs 
power in the general government? and that it cannot obtain 
that power except by increased representation ? and that it cannot 
increase its representation except by conquest and extension over 
the territories ? and that with this policy all measures are incom- 
patible, which bid fair to place the territories into the hands of 
free labor? 

"This is not all. Listen to the slaveholder once more: 'Our 
states,' he tells us, 'are essentially agricultural producing states. 
We have but little commerce, and still less manufacturing industry. 
All legislation tending to benefit the commercial and manufacturing 
interests principally, is therefore to our immediate prejudice. It 



REPUBLICAN SPEECH BY CARL SCHURZ 251 

will oblige us to contribute to the growth and prosperity of the 
free states at our expense, and consequently turn the balance of 
political power still more against us. We are, therefore, obliged 
to demand that all attempts to promote, by Federal legislation, 
the industrial interest, be given up.' Nothing more logical. The 
system of slave labor has never permitted them to recognize and 
develop the harmony of agricultural, commercial, and industrial 
pursuits. What is more natural than that they should seek to 
give the peculiar economic interest in which their superiority con- 
sists, the preponderance in our economical policy? Hence their 
unrelenting opposition to all legislation tending to develop the 
peculiar resources of the free states. 

"Here let us pause. Is there nothing strange or surprising in 
all this ? You may call it madness, but there is method in this 
madness. The slave power is impelled by the irresistible power 
of necessity. It cannot exist unless it rules, and it cannot rule 
unless it keeps down its opponents. All its demands and arts are 
in strict harmony with its interests and attributes ; they are the 
natural growth of its existence. I repeat, I am wilUng to acquit 
it of the charge of wilful aggression ; I am willing to concede that 
it struggles for self-preservation ; but now the momentous ques- 
tion arises, how do the means which seem indispensible to the self- 
preservation of slavery agree with the existence and interests of 
free labor society? 

"Sir, if Mr. Hammond of South Carolina, or Mr. Brown of 
Mississippi, had listened to me, would they not have been obliged 
to give me credit for having stated their case fairly ? Now, listen 
to me while I state our own. 

"Cast your eyes over that great beehive, called the free states. 
See by the railroad and the telegraphic wire every village, almost 
every backwoods cottage, drawn within the immediate reach of 
progressive civilization. Look over our grain fields, but lately a 
lonesome wilderness, where machinery is almost superseding the 
labor of the human hand ; over our workshops whose aspect is 
almost daily changed by the magic touch of inventive genius; 
over our fleets of merchant vessels, numerous enough to make the 
whole world tributary to our prosperity; look upon our society 
where by popular education and the continual change of condition 



252 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

the dividing lines between ranks and classes, are almost obliterated ; 
look upon our system of public instruction, which places even the 
lowliest child of the people upon the high road of progressive 
advancement ; upon our rapid growth and expansive prosperity, 
which is indeed subject to reverses and checks, but contains such 
a wonderful fertility of resource, that every check is a mere incen- 
tive to new enterprise, every reverse but a mere opportunity for 
the development of new powers. 

"To what do we owe all this ? First and foremost, to that per- 
fect freedom of inquiry, which acknowledges no rules but those 
of logic, no limits but those that bound the faculties of the human 
mind. (Cheers.) Its magic consists in its universality. To it 
we owe the harmony of our progressive movement in all its endless 
ramifications. No single science, no single practical pursuit exists 
in our day independently of all other sciences, all other practical 
pursuits. This is the age of the soHdarity of progress. Set a 
limit to the freedom of inquiry in one direction and you destroy 
the harmony of its progressive action. Give us the Roman in- 
quisition, which forbids Galileo Galites to think that the earth 
moves around the sun, and he has to interrupt and give up the 
splendid train of his discoveries and their influence upon all other 
branches of science is lost ; he has to give it up, or he must fight 
the inquisition. (Cheers.) Let the slave power or any other 
political or economic interest tell us that we must think, and 
say, and invent, and discover nothing which is against its demands, 
and we must interrupt and give up the harmony of our progressive 
development, or fight the tyrannical pretension, whatever shape it 
may assume. (Loud cheers.) 

"Beheving as we do, that the moral and ideal development of 
man is the true end and aim of human society, we must preserve 
in their efficiency the means which serve that end. In order to 
secure to the freedom of inquiry its full productive power, we must 
surround it with all the safeguards which political institutions 
afford. As we cannot set a limit to the activity of our minds, so 
we cannot muzzle our mouths or fetter the press with a censor- 
ship. (Applause.) We cannot arrest or restrain the discussion of 
the question, what system of labor or what organization of society 
promotes best the moral and intellectual development of man. 



REPUBLICAN SPEECH BY CARL SCHURZ 253 

(Loud applause.) We cannot deprive a single individual of the 
privileges which protect him in the free exercise of his faculties, 
and the enjoyment of his right, so long as these faculties are not 
employed to the detriment of the rights and liberties of others. 
Our organization of society resting upon equal rights, we find 
our security in a general system of popular education which fits 
all for an intelligent exercise of those rights. This is the home 
policy of free society. This policy in our Federal affairs must 
necessarily correspond. Deeming free and intelligent labor the 
only safe basis of society, it is our duty to expand its blessings 
over all the territorj^ within our reach ; seeing our own prosperity 
advanced by the prosperity of our neighbors, we must endeavor 
to plant upon our borders a system of labor which answers in that 
respect. Do we recognize the right of the laboring man to the soil 
he cultivates and shield him against oppressive speculation? 
Seeing in the harmonious development of all branches of labor a 
source of progress and power, we must adopt a policy which draws 
to light the resources of the land, gives work to our workshops 
and security to our commerce. These are the principles and views 
governing our policy. 

"Slaveholders, look at this picture and at this. Can the differ- 
ence escape your observation ? You may say, as many have said, 
that there is a difference of principle, but not necessarily an an- 
tagonism of interests. Look again. 

"Your social system is founded upon forced labor, ours upon 
free labor. Slave labor cannot exist together with freedom of 
inquiry, and so you demand the restriction of that freedom ; free 
labor cannot exist without it, and so we maintain its inviolability. 
Slave lal^or demands the setting aside of the safeguards of individ- 
ual liberty, for the purpose of upholding subordination and pro- 
tecting slave property ; free labor demands their preservation as 
essential and indispensible to its existence and progressive develop- 
ment. Slavery demands extension by an aggressive foreign pol- 
icy; free labor demands an honorable peace and friendly inter- 
course with the world abroad for its commerce, and a peaceable 
and undisturbed development of our resources at home for its 
agriculture and industry. Slavery demands extension over na- 
tional territories for the purpose of gaining political power. 



254 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

Free labor demands the national domain for workingmen, for 
the purpose of spreading the blessings of liberty and civilization. 
Slavery, therefore, opposes all measures tending to secure the soil 
to the actual laborer ; free labor, therefore, recognizes the right 
of the settler to the soil, and demands measures protecting him 
against the pressure of speculation. Slavery demands the abso- 
lute ascendency of the planting interest in our economical policy ; 
free labor demands legislation tending to develop all the resources 
of the land, and to harmonize the agricultural, commercial, and 
industrial interests. Slavery demands the control of the general 
government for its special protection and the promotion of its 
peculiar interests ; free labor demands that the general govern- 
ment be administered for the purpose of securing to all the 
blessings of liberty, and for the promotion of the general welfare. 
{Great applause.) Slavery demands the recognition of its divine 
right ; free labor recognizes no divine right but that of the liberty 
of all men. {Loud cheers.) 

"With one word, slavery demands, for its protection and per- 
petuation, a system of policy which is utterly incompatible with 
the principles upon which the organization of free labor society 
rests. There is the antagonism. There is the essence of the 
'irrepressible conflict.' It is a conflict of principles underlying 
interests, always the same, whether appearing as a moral, economic, 
or political question. Mr. Douglas boasted that he could repress 
it with police measures ; he might as well try to fetter the winds 
with a rope. The South means to repress it with decisions of the 
Supreme Court; they might as well, like Xerxes, try to subdue the 
waves of the ocean by throwing chains into the water. {Applause.) 

"The conflict of constitutional construction is indeed a mere 
incident of the great struggle, a mere symptom of the crisis. Long 
before the slavery question in the form of an abstract constitutional 
controversy agitated the public mind, the conflict of interests 
raged in our national councils. What mattered it that the strug- 
gle about the encouragement of home industry and internal im- 
provements was not ostensibly carried on under the form of pro 
and antislavery ? What mattered it that your new-fangled con- 
stitutional doctrines were not yet invented, when slavery tried to 
expand by the annexation of foreign countries? that no Dred 



REPUBLICAN SPEECH BY CARL SCHURZ 255 

Scott decision was yet cooked up, when the right of petition was 
curtailed, when attempts were made to arrest the discussion of the 
slavery question all over the Union, and when the trial by jury 
and the writ of habeas corpus were overridden by the fugitive 
slave law ? And even lately, when the slave power, with one gi- 
gantic grasp, attempted to seize the whole of our national domain, 
what else was and is your new constitutional doctrine but an ill- 
disguised attempt to clothe a long-cherished design with the color 
of law? 

"Read your history with an impartial eye, and you will find 
that the construction of the constitution always shaped itself 
according to the prevailing moral impulses or the predominance 
of the material over political interests. The logic of our minds 
is but too apt to follow in the track of our sympathies and aspira- 
tions. It was when the South had control of the government 
that acts were passed for the raising of duties on imports, for the 
creation of a national bank, and in aid of the American shipping 
interest. It was under the lead of the South that the systems 
of internal improvements and of the protection of home industry 
were inaugurated ; it was the South no less than the North that 
insisted upon and exercised the power of Congress to exclude 
slavery from the territories. So long as these measures seemed 
to agree with the predominant interest there seemed to be no 
question about their constitutionality. Even Mr. Calhoun him- 
self said in one of his most celebrated speeches, delivered in the 
session of 1815-1816, 'That it was the duty of the government, as 
a means of defense, to encourage the domestic industry of the 
country.' But as soon as it was found out that this policy re- 
dounded more to the benefit of free labor than that of the unen- 
terprising South, then the same men who had inaugurated it 
worked its overthrow, on the plea that it was at war with the prin- 
ciples of the Constitution. The constitutionahty of the Ordinance 
of 1787 was never questioned as long as the prevaihng sentiment 
in the South ran against the perpetuation of slavery. The Mis- 
souri Compromise was held as sacred as the Constitution itself, 
so long as it served to introduce slave states into the Union ; but 
no sooner, by virtue of its provisions, were free territories to be 
organized, than its unconstitutionaUty was discovered. 



256 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

"The predominance of interests determines the construction of 
the Constitution. So it was and it will ever be. Only those who 
remained true to the original program of the fathers, remained true 
to the original construction. Decide the contest of principles 
underlying interests, and the conflict of constitutional construc- 
tion will settle itself. This may seem a dangerous political theory. 
It is not an article of my creed, not a matter of principles, but a 
matter of experience ; not a doctrine, but a fact. 

"Thus the all-pervading antagonism stands before us, gigantic 
in its dimensions, growing every day in the awful proportions of 
its problems, involving the character of our institutions ; involv- 
ing our relations with the world abroad ; involving our peace, 
our rights, our liberties at home ; involving our growth and pros- 
perity ; involving our moral and political existence as a nation. 

"How shortsighted, how childish are those who find its origin 
in artificial agitation ! As though we could produce a tempest by 
blowing our noses, or cause an earthquake by stamping our puny 
feet upon the ground. (Laughter.) But how to solve, how to 
decide it? Let us pass in review our political parties and the 
remedies they propose. There we encounter the so-called Union 
party, with Bell and Everett, who tell us the best way to settle 
the controversy is to ignore it. (Laughter.) 

"Ignore it ! Ignore it, when attempts are made to plunge the 
country into war and disgrace, for the purpose of slavery exten- 
sion ! Ignore it, when slavery and free labor wage their fierce war 
about the possession of the national domain ! Ignore it, when the 
liberties of speech and of the press are attacked ! Ignore it, 
when the actual settler claims the virgin soil, and the slaveholding 
capitalists claim it also ! Ignore it, when the planting interest 
seeks to establish and maintain its exclusive supremacy in our 
economical policy. Ignore it, indeed ! Ignore the fire that con- 
sumes the corner posts of your house ! Ignore the storm that 
breaks the rudder and tears to tatters the sails of your ship ! Con- 
jure the revolted elements with a meek Mt. Vernon lecture ! Pour 
upon the furious waves the placid oil of a quotation from Wash- 
ington's farewell address ! (Cheers and laughter.) 

"It is true that they tell us that they will enforce the laws and 
the constitution well enough ! But what laws ? Those that 



REPUBLICAN SPEECH BY CARL SCHURZ 257 

free labor demand or those that slavery give us ? what constitu- 
tion? That of Washington and Madison, or that of Shdell, 
Douglas, and Taney ? {Loud and long-continued cheering.) 

''The conflict stands there with the stubborn brute force of 
reality. However severely it may disturb the nerves of timid 
gentlemen, there it stands and speaks the hard stern language 
of fact. I understand well that great problems and responsibilities 
should be approached with care and caution. But times like these 
demand the firm action of men who know what they will, and will 
do it, not that eunuch policy, which, conscious of its own unpro- 
ductiveness, invites us blandly to settle down into the imbecile 
contentment of general impotency. They cannot ignore the con- 
flict if they would, but have not nerve enough to decide it if they 
could. 

"The next party that claims our attention is the so-called 
Democracy. As it is my object to discuss the practical, not the 
constitutional aspects of the problems before us, I might pass over 
the divisions existing in that organization. In fact, the point 
that separates Mr. Douglas from Mr. Breckenridge is but a mere 
quibble, a mere matter of etiquette. Mr. Douglas is unwilling 
to admit in words what he has a hundred times admitted in fact, 
for, can you tell me, what practical difference there is in the world 
between direct and indirect intervention by Congress in favor 
of slavery and that kind of nonintervention by Congress which 
merely ^consists in making room for direct intervention by the 
Supreme Court? And besides, in nearly all practical measures 
of policy Mr. Douglas is regularly to be found on the side of the 
extreme South. Like that great statesman of yours (I beg your 
pardon, gentlemen, for alluding to him in decent political com- 
pany), he always votes against measures for the encouragement 
of home industry, perhaps because he does not understand them. 
(Laughter.) He is one of the firmest supporters of the ascendency 
of the planters' interests in our economical questions, and as to 
the extension of slavery by conquest and annexation, the wildest 
fillibusters may always count upon his tenderest sympathies. 

"So I say that I might have ignored him, if he had not succeeded 
in creating the m_ost deafening of noises with the hollowest of 
drums. (Loud cheers.) 



258 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

"He proposes to repress the 'irrepressible conflict' with what 
he emphatically styles 'his great principle.' At first he defined it 
as * self-government of the people in the territories ' ; but it became 
soon apparent that under his great principle the people of the terri- 
tories were governed by anybody but self, and he called it ' popular 
sovereignty.' It soon turned out that this kind of sovereignty 
was not very popular after all, and he called it 'nonintervention.' 
(Laughter.) Mcthinks something will intervene pretty soon and 
he will strain his imagination for another name, if it be worth while 
at all to christen a thing which never had any tangible existence. 

"But if we may believe him, his 'great principle,' and nothing 
but his 'great principle,' will settle the 'irrepressible conflict,' 
and restore peace and harmony to the nation ; and, in fact, Mr. 
Douglas is about the only one of the presidential candidates who 
insists that there is an immediate necessity of saving that ancient 
institution. 

"Let us judge the merits of the great principle by its results. 
Has it secured to the inhabitants of the territories the right of 
self-government? Never were the people of a territory subject 
to a despotism more arbitrary, and to violence more lawless and 
atrocious than were the people of Kansas after the enactment of 
the Nebraska bill. Has it removed the slavery question from the 
Halls of Congress ? The fight has never raged with greater fierce- 
ness, and Congress hardly ever came so near debating with bowie 
knives and revolvers, as about the questions raised by the Nebraska 
bill. Has it established safe and uniform rules for the construc- 
tion of the Constitution ? It has set aside the construction of the 
Constitution by those who framed it ; and for the rest, let Mr. 
Douglas give you his opinion of the Dred Scott decision. Has 
it given peace and harmonj^ to the country by repressing the 
* irrepressible conflict ' ? Alas ! poor great principle ! this ha- 
rangue of peace and harmony inflamed the 'irrepressible conflict,' 
even inside the Democratic party, and rent into two sections an 
organization that claimed the exclusive privilege of nationality. 

"These were its immediate results. It is true, Mr. Douglas 
accuses his adversaries of having created the disturbance. Cer- 
tainly; if the whole American nation had bowed their heads in 
silent obedience before Mr. Douglas' mandates, there would have 



REPUBLICAN SPEECH BY CARL SCHURZ 259 

been no strife. Mr, Slidell, Mr. Buchanan, and Mr. Brecken- 
ridge may say the same ; so may the Emperor of Austria and the 
King of Naples. Such men are apt to be disturbed by opponents, 
and Mr. Douglas need not be surprised if he has a few ! 

"The source of the difficulty was this: The Kansas-Nebraska 
bill was thrown, as an ambiguous, illogical measure, between two 
antagonistic interests, each of which construed it to its own ad- 
vantage. It brought the contesting forces together, face to face, 
without offering a clear ground upon which to settle the conflict. 
Thus it quickened and intensified the struggle, instead of allaying 
it. Hence its total failure as a harmonizing measure. 

"What, then, is the positive result? As to its practical im- 
portance in the conflict between free and slave labor, Mr. Douglas 
himself enlightens us as follows : — 

Has the South been excluded from all the territory acquired 
from Mexico ? What says the bill from the House of Representa- 
tives now on your table, repealing the slave code in New Mexico 
estabhshed by the people themselves? It is part of the history 
of the country that under this doctrine of non-intervention, this 
doctrine that you delight to call squatter sovereignty, the people of 
New Mexico have introduced and protected slavery in the whole 
of that territory. Under this doctrine they have converted a tract 
of free territory into slave territory, more than five times the size 
of the state of New York. Under this doctrine slavery has been 
extended from the Rio Grande to the Gulf of California, and from 
the fine of the Republic of Mexico, not only up to 36° 30' but up 
to 38° — giving you a degree and a half more territory than you 
ever claimed. In 1848 and 1849 and 1850 you only asked to have 
the line of 36° 30'. The Nashville convention fixed that as its 
ultimatum. I offered it in the Senate in August, 1848, and it was 
adopted here but rejected in the House of Representatives. You 
asked only up to 36° 30' and nonintervention has given you up 
to 38°, a degree and a half more than you asked ; and yet you say 
that this is a sacrifice of Southern rights. 

'"These are the fruits of this principle which the Senator from 
Mississippi regards as hostile to the rights of the South. Where 
did you ever get any more fruits that were more palatable to your 
tastes or more refreshing to your strength ? What other inch of 



260 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

free territory has been converted into slave territory on the Amer- 
ican continent since the revolution, except in New Mexico and 
Arizona under the principle of nonintervention affirmed at 
Charleston? If it is true that this principle of nonintervention 
has conferred upon you all that immense territory ; has protected 
slavery in that comparatively Northern and cold region where 
you did not expect it to go, cannot you trust the same principle 
further South when you come to acquire additional territory from 
Mexico ? If it be true that this principle of nonintervention has 
given to slavery all New Mexico, which was surrounded on nearly 
every side by free territory, will not the same principle protect 
you in the Northern states of Mexico, when they are acquired, 
since they are now surrounded by slave territory?' 

" Indeed ! This, then, is the practical solution of the difficulty 
which Mr. Douglas proposes : ' The great principle of noninter- 
vention' which, according to his own testimony, strengthens 
slavery by increasing the number of slave states, and their repre- 
sentation and power in the general government ; to which is to 
be added the annexation of Cuba and the Northern states of 
Mexico, out of which an additional number of slave states is to 
be carved. But his Northern friends say that he is the cham- 
pion of free labor — and they are honorable men. 

"Oh ! what a deep-seated overweening confidence Mr. Douglas, 
when he made this statement, must have had in the unfathomable, 
desperate, incorrigible stupidity of those Northern Democrats 
who support him for the purpose of baffling and punishing the 
fire-eaters of the South. Good, innocent souls, do they not see 
that by supporting Mr. Douglas' policy which throws into the lap 
of slavery territory after territory, they will strengthen and render 
more overbearing the very same slave power they mean to baffle 
and punish ? Do they not see that they were preparing a lash for 
their own backs ? It is true, when they feel it, and they deserve 
to feel it, they may console themselves that it is a whip of their 
own manufacture. 

"At last we arrive at the program of the slave power in its open 
and undisguised forms, of which Mr. Breckenridge is the repre- 
sentative and Mr. Douglas the servant, although he does not 
wear its livery except on occasions of state. 



REPUBLICAN SPEECH BY CARL SCHURZ 261 

"This program is as follows: The agitation of the slavery- 
question, North and South, is to be arrested ; the Fugitive Slave 
Law, in its present form, is to be strictly carried out, and all state 
legislation impeding its execution, to be repealed; the constitu- 
tional right of slavery to occupy the territories of the United States 
and to be protected there, is to be acknowledged; all measures 
tending to impede the ingress of slavery, and its establishment in 
the territories, are to be abandoned ; the opposition to the con- 
quest and annexation of foreign countries, out of which more slave 
states can be formed, is to be given up ; the economic policy of the 
planting interest, to the exclusion of the encouragement of home 
industry, is to become the ruling policy of the country. 

"This is the Southern solution of the 'irrepressible conflict.' 

"This program possesses at least the merit of logic, the logic 
of slavery despotism against the logic of free labor and liberty. 
The issue is plainly made up. Free labor is summoned to submit 
to the measures which slavery deems necessary for its perpetuation. 
We are called upon to adapt our laws and systems of policy, and 
the whole development of our social organization, to the necessities 
and interests of slavery. We are summoned to surrender. Let 
us for a moment judge the people of the free states by the meanest 
criterion we can think of ; let us apply suppositions to them, which, 
if applied to ourselves, we would consider an insult. 

"If the people of the free states were so devoid of moral sense 
as not to distinguish between right and wrong ; so devoid of gen- 
erous impulses as not to sympathize with the downtrodden and 
the degraded, so devoid of manly pride as to be naturally inclined 
to submit to everybody who is impudent enough to assume the 
command ; tell me, even in this worst, this most disgusting of all 
contingencies, could free labor quietly submit to the demands of 
the slave power so long as it has a just appreciation of its own 
interests ? If we did not care, neither for other people's rights nor 
for our own dignity, can we submit as long as we are for our own 
pockets? Surrender the privilege of discussing our social prob- 
lems without restraint ! Be narrowed down to a given circle of 
ideas, which we shall not transgress ! Do we not owe our growth, 
prosperity, and power to that freedom of inquiry which is the source 
of all progress and improvement? 



262 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

"Surrender the national domain to slavery! Do we not owe 
our growth and prosperity to the successful labor of our neighbors 
just as well as our own? Shall we consent to be surrounded and 
hemmed in with thriftless communities, whose institutions retard 
our own ? Abandon all laws like the homestead bill, tending to 
establish free labor on our national domain ! Shall we thus 
give up the rights of labor, and destroy the inheritance of our 
children ? 

"Give up our opposition to the extension of slavery by the con- 
quest of foreign countries ! Shall we squander the blood of our 
sons and the marrow of the land in destructive wars, for the profit 
of the enemies of free labor, while it is a peaceful development to 
which we owe our power in the world? Adopt the exclusive 
economic policy of the planting interest ! Shall our mineral 
wealth sleep undeveloped in the soil? Shall our water powers 
run idle, and the bustle of our factories cease ? Shall the immense 
laboring force in our immense population be deprived of the ad- 
vantage of a harmonious development of all the branches of human 
labor ? Shall we give up our industrial and commercial indepen- 
dence from the world abroad ? Impossible ! It cannot be thought 
of ! Even the most debased and submissive of our dough-faces 
cannot submit to it as soon as the matter comes to a practical test ; 
and therefore the success of the Southern program will never 
bring about a final decision of the conflict. Suppose we were 
beaten in the present electoral contest, would that decide the 
conflict of interests forever ? No ! Thanks to the noble instincts 
of human nature, our consciences would not let us sleep ; thanks 
to the good sense of the people, their progressive interests would 
not suffer them to give up the struggle. The power of resistance, 
the elasticity of free society, cannot be exhausted by one, cannot 
be annihilated by a hundred defeats. Why ? Because it receives 
new impulses, new inspirations from every day's work ; it marches 
on in harmony with the spirit of the age. 

"There is but one way of settling the 'irrepressible conflict.' 
It is not by resisting the spirit of the times, and by trying to neu- 
tralize its impelling power ; for you attempt that in vain ; but it is 
by neutralizing the obstacles which have thrown themselves in 
the path. There is no other. The 'irrepressible conflict' will 



REPUBLICAN SPEECH BY CARL SCHURZ 263 

rage with unabated fury until our social and political development 
is harmonized with the irrepressible tendency of the age. 

"That is the solution which the Repubhcans propose. Their 
program is simple and consistent. 

"Protection of our natural and constitutional rights. Non- 
interference with the social and political institutions existing by 
the legislation of sovereign states. Exclusion of slavery from the 
national territories ; they must be free because they are national. 
{Immense cheering.) 

"Promotion and expansion of free labor by the homestead bill 
and the encouragement of home industry. {Cheering renewed.) 

"Will this effect a settlement of the conflict? Let the fathers 
of this republic answer the question, and I will give you the South- 
ern construction of their policy. In a debate which occurred in 
the Senate of the United States, on the 23d of January, Mr. Mason 
of Virginia, said : ' Now, as far as concerns our ancestry, I am 
satisfied of this — they were not abolitionists. On the contrary, 
I beheve this was their opinion — their prejudice was aimed against 
the foreign slave trade, the African slave trade, and their belief 
was, that cutting that off, slavery would die out of itself, without 
any act of abolition. I attempted at one time to show, by the 
recorded opinions of Mr. Madison, that the famous Ordinance of 
1787, so far as it prohibited slavery in the territory northwest of 
the Ohio River, was aimed at the African slave trade, and at that 
alone ; the idea being that if they would restrict the area into 
which slaves would be introduced from abroad, they would, to 
that extent, prevent the importation of slaves, and that, when it 
was altogether prevented, the condition of slavery would die out 
of itself ; but they were not abolitionists, far less within the mean- 
ing and spirit of the abolitionists of the present day.' 

"Well, I am willing to accept this as it stands, and Mr. Mason 
may certainly be considered good Southern authority. I will not 
stop to investigate the depth and extent of the antislavery senti- 
ments of such men as Franklin, who was father of an abolitionist 
society, and of Washington, who expressed his desire *to see 
slavery abolished by law ' ; I am satisfied with Mr. Mason's ad- 
mission. 

"This, then, is what the fathers intended to effect; to bring 



264 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

about a state of things by which slavery would die out of itself. 
What else do we want ? 'You mean, then,' I am asked, 'to adopt 
a policy which will work the peaceable and gradual extinction of 
slavery ? ' And I answer, ' Yes ; for if we do not, we shall have to 
submit to a policy which will work the gradual extinction of lib- 
erty,' There is the dilemma. Our answer is understood. If 
Washington, Madison, and Jefferson were abolitionists, we are ; 
Mr. Mason says they were not ; well, then, we are not, for our policy 
has been theirs, and theirs has become ours. {Loud cheers.) 

"Will this pohcy effect a solution of the conflict? It will ; be- 
cause it will harmonize our social and political development with 
the tendency of our age, by neutralizing the obstacles that stand 
in its way. 

"But I am told that these obstacles refuse to be neutralized. 
They will resist. Resist by what ? By dissolving the Union ! 
This specter has so long haunted the imaginations of superstitious 
people, that it is time at last to anatomize the bloodless body. 

"They threaten to dissolve the Union. Why? First, because 
we do not stop the agitation of the slavery question. It is true, 
we do discuss every social problem that presents itself to our 
consideration ; we agitate it, and we do not mean to stop. And, 
therefore, slaveholders, you will dissolve the Union ? Do you 
think we shall make haste to stop the agitation, to muzzle our 
mouths and our press after you have dissolved it ? United as we 
are with you at present, we certainly are not devoid of fraternal 
sympathy ; but let the acrimonious feelings arising from a divorce 
embitter our relations, will not the agitation, which annoys you 
now, be a hundred times more dangerous to you then ? (Cheers.) 

"Second, you threaten to dissolve the Union because we do not 
show sufficient alacrity in the catching of fugitive slaves. True, 
we are not much inclined to perform for the slaveholder a menial, 
dirty service, which he would hardly stoop to do for himself. 
(Enthusiastic cheering.) And, therefore, you will dissolve the 
Union ! Do you not see that, while now, indeed, a great many 
slaves escape, the North would, after a dissolution, scorn to sur- 
render a single one ? Would not what is now the Canada line be 
removed right to the banks of the Ohio ? 

"Third, you threaten the dissolution of the Union because we 



REPUBLICAN SPEECH BY CARL SCHURZ 265 

do not mean to surrender the territories to slavery. True, we 
mean to use every constitutional means within our reach to save 
them to free labor. And, therefore, you will dissolve the Union ! 
Do you think that after a dissolution we shall courteously invite 
slavery to make itself comfortable on our national domain ? As 
things are now, 'champions of free labor,' such as Douglas, may 
occasionally offer you a chance to acquire for slavery a territory 
'five times as large as the state of New York,' but will that be 
possible after the Union has been dissolved? Mark well what 
position the North will take, if, by a revolutionary act against our 
national government, you should attempt to cut loose from the 
Union. The territories are the property of the Union as such ; 
those who in a revolutionary way desert the Union, give up their 
right to the property of the Union. That property, the territories, 
will remain where the Union remains, and the slave power would 
do well first to consider how much blood it can spare, before it 
attempts to strip the Union of a single square foot of ground. 
{Tremendous cheering.) Thus, while according to Judge Douglas, 
you now have a chance to acquire slave territory by the operation 
of his 'great principle,' that chance will be entirely gone as soon as 
by a secession you give up the least shadow of a right to the 
property of the Union. 

"Lastly, you threaten to dissolve the Union, if the North re- 
fuses to submit to the exclusive economic policy of the planting 
interest. You want to establish the commercial and industrial 
independence of the slaveholding states. For years you have 
held Southern conventions and passed resolutions to that effect. 
You resolved not to purchase any longer the products of Northern 
industrial labor, but to build your own factories ; not to carry on 
your exporting and importing trade any longer by Northern ships, 
but to establish steamship lines and commercial connections of 
your own. Well, enough. Why did you not do it, after having 
resolved it? Was it want of money? Y^ou have an abundance 
of it. Was it want of determination ? Your resolutions displayed 
the fiercest zeal. What was it, then? And, indeed, the failure 
is magnificently complete. Senator Mason's homespun coat, 
sewn with Yankee thread and needle, adorned with Yankee 
buttons, hangs in the closet, a lone star in solitary splendor. 



266 PRESIDENTIAL CAMrAIGN 

(Loud laughter.) After trying to establish a large shoe factory 
for the South, you came after a while to the irresistible conclusion 
that you must wear Massachusetts shoes and boots or go bare- 
footed. And even your Norfolk steamships are not launched 
yet from the dry-docks of Southern imagination. (Laughter.) 
How is this ? I will tell you. The very same institution for the 
protection and perpetuation of which you want to establish your 
commercial and industrial independence, is incompatible with 
commercial and industrial labor and enterprise. 

"For this there are several excellent reasons. First, that class 
of your society which rules and wants to perpetuate its rule, does 
not consist of workingmen. The inspiration of regular activity 
is foreign to their minds. Living upon the forced labor of others, 
they find their pride in being gentlemen of leisure. But it requires 
men of a superior organization to make leisure productive ; men 
of the ordinary stamp, who have the leisure for doing something, 
will in most cases do nothing. But it requires active labor to 
make us understand and appreciate labor in order to be able to 
direct labor. Hence the slaveholders cannot take the lead in 
such a commercial and industrial movement without changing 
the nature of their condition. But you may object, that they can 
at least encourage commerce and industry, and leave the exe- 
cution of their plans and wishes to others. Indeed ! But you 
must not forget that in modern times the most active and enter- 
prising class of society as soon as it becomes numerous, will in- 
evitably become the ruhng class. How can, therefore, the slave- 
holders do as you say, without undermining the foundation of 
their own ascendency ! But it is just that ascendency by which 
they mean not to weaken, but to fortify. Do not bring forward 
this city of St. Louis as proof to the contrary. Your commerce 
and your industry are indeed largely developed, although INIissouri 
is a slave state, but do j'ou not see that in the same measure as they 
rise, the ascendency of the slave power disappears ? (Repeated 
cheering.) Thus this has become a free city on slave soil. 

"But this is not all. Not only are the slaveholders, as a class, 
unfit to direct the commercial and industrial movement, but their 
system of labor is unfit to carry it out. Commerce and industry, 
in order to become independent, need intelligent labor. In the 



REPUBLICAN SPEECH BY CARL SCHURZ 267 

North, every laborer thinks, and is required to think. In the 
South the laborer is forbidden to think, lest he think too much, 
for thought engenders aspirations. (Laughter and applause.) 
With us progress and enterprise derive their main support, their 
strongest impulses, from the intellectual development of the labor- 
ing classes. We do not dread the aspirations from it ; it is the 
source of our prosperity, and, at the same time, of our safety. 
Our laboring man must be a free man, in order to be what he ought 
to be, an intelligent laborer. Therefore, we educate him for 
liberty by our system of pubhc instruction. In the South, the 
intellectual development of the laboring classes necessary for in- 
telligent labor, would create aspirations dangerous to your do- 
mestic institutions. Your laboring man must be a brute in order 
to remain what you want him to be, a slave. Therefore, you with- 
hold from him all means of intellectual development. Among our 
farms and workshops there stands an institution from which our 
system of labor derives its inspirations ; that is, our schoolhouse, 
where our free laborers are educated. On your plantation fields 
there stands another institution, from which your system of labor 
derives its inspirations ; and that is your schoolhouse, where 
your slaves are flogged. And you speak of establishing the com- 
mercial and industrial independence of the slaveholding states ! 
Do you not see, that, in order to do this, you must adapt your 
system of labor to that purpose, by making the laborer intelligent, 
respectable, and at the same time aspiring? But if by making 
the laborer intelligent, respectable, and aspiring, you attempt to 
force industrial enterprise, in a large measure, upon the slave 
states, do you not see that your system of slave labor must yield ? 
To foster commerce and industry in the slave states, for the pur- 
pose cf protecting slavery, would it not be like letting the sunlight 
into a room which you want to keep dark? Hence the slave 
states can never become commercially and industrially indepen- 
dent as long as they remain slave states. They will always be 
obliged to buy from others, and others will do their carrying trade. 
At present they do their business with friends, who are united 
with them by the bonds of the Union. Thej^ speak of dissolving 
that Union ; then, as now, they will be obliged to transact the same 
business with us, their nearest neighbors, for if they could do other- 



268 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

wise, they would have done so long ago. Would they prefer by the 
dissolution of the Union to make enemies of those upon whom they 
will always be commercially and industrially dependent ? 

"Thus, you see, the dissolution of the Union would in all points 
of dispute defeat the very object for which the South might feel 
inclined to attempt it. It would effect just the contrary of what 
it was intended for, and indeed, if there is a party that can logi- 
cally and consistently advocate the dissolution of the Union, it is 
the party of extreme abolitionists who desire to extinguish slavery 
and punish the South by a sudden and violent crisis. But as to 
the slave states, as long as they have sense enough to understand 
their interests, and to appreciate their situation, they may thank 
their good fortune, if they are suffered to stay in the Union with 
confederates, who are, indeed, not willing to sacrifice their own 
principles and interests to slavery, but by the radiating influence 
of their own growth and energy will, at least, draw the Southern 
states, also, upon the road of progressive development. 

"But we are told that the people of the slave states are a war- 
like race, and that they will gain by force what we are unwilling 
peacefully to concede. War ! What a charm there is in that 
word for a people of colonels and generals ! Well, since that old 
German monk invented that insignificant black powder, which 
blew the strongholds of feudalism into the air, war falls more and 
more under the head of the mathematical sciences. Don Quixote, 
who, undoubtedly, would have been a hero in the seventh century, 
would certainly be the most egregious fool in the nineteenth. I 
have nothing to say about the bravery of the Southern people, for 
aught I care they may be braver than they pretend to be ; but I 
invite them candidly to open their eyes. 

"I will not compare the resources of the South, in men and 
money, to those of the North, although statistical statements 
would demonstrate the overwhelming superiority of the latter. 
We can afford to be liberal, and for argument's sake, admit that 
the South will equal the North in numbers ; and if they insist 
upon it, excel us in martial spirit. But it requires very httle 
knowledge of military matters to understand that aside from num- 
bers, equipment, courage, and discipline, the strength of an army 
consists in its ability to concentrate its forces, at all times, upon the 



REPUBLICAN SPEECH BY CARL SCHURZ 269 

decisive point. 'Providence is on the side of the big battalions,' 
said Napoleon. That means not that victory will always be with 
the most numerous army, but with that which is always able to 
appear in strength where the decisive blow is to be struck. An 
army that is always scattered over a large surface is, properly 
speaking, no army at all. Even by a much less numerous but 
concentrated enemy, it will be beaten in detail, division after 
division ; it is defeated before having lost a man. This is plain. 

"The South thinks of going to war for the benefit and protection 
of slavery. But slavery is not merely an abstract principle; 
slavery consists materially in the individual slaves, in so and so 
many milKons of human chattels scattered over so and so many 
thousands of square miles. In order to protect slavery, it is 
essential that the slaveholders be protected in the possession of 
their slaves. 

"I say, therefore, that slavery cannot expect to be protected 
in general without being protected in detail. But how can you 
protect it in detail ? By guarding fifteen hundred miles of North- 
ern frontier and two thousand miles of seacoast against an enemy 
who is perfectly free in his movements, and aided by an extensive 
railroad system always able to concentrate his forces wherever 
he pleases ? It is impossible ; the dullest understanding sees it. 
It may be said that it will not be necessary ; indeed, for the free 
states it would not ; they may, in order to concentrate their forces, 
expose their territory; for the damage done by an invasion is 
easily repaired. The retreating invader cannot carry the liber- 
ties of the invaded country away with him. (Cheers.) Not so 
with slavery. A Northern antislavery army, or even a small 
flying corps invading a slaveholding state, would perhaps not sys- 
tematically liberate the slaves, but at all events it would not 
squander much time and health in catching the runaway. The 
probability, therefore, is that wherever a Northern army appears, 
the slaves disappear, and slavery with them — at least for the 
time being. Invade a free state and the restoration of liberty, 
after the attack is repulsed, requires only the presence of freemen. 
But the restoration of slavery will require capital ; that capital 
consisted principally in slaves ; the slaves have run away, and with 
them the capital necessary for the restoration of slavery. 



270 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

"The slave states, therefore, cannot expose their territory 
without leaving unprotected the institution, for the protection of 
which the war was undertaken. They have to cover thousands 
and thousands of vulnerable points, for every plantation is an 
open wound, every negro cabin a sore. Every border or seaboard 
slave state will need her own soldiers, and more, too, for her own 
protection ; and where will be the material for the concentrated 
army ? Scattered over thousands of miles without the possibihty 
of concentration. 

"Besides, the slave states harbor a dangerous enemy within 
their own boundaries, and that is slavery itself. Imagine they 
are at war with an antislavery people, whom they have exasper- 
ated by their own hostility. What will be the effect upon the 
slaves? The question is not whether the North will instigate a 
slave rebellion, for I suppose they will not ; the question is, whether 
they can prevent it, and I think they cannot. But the mere an- 
ticipation of a negro insurrection (and the heated imagination of 
the slaveholder will discover symptoms of a rebellious spirit in 
every trifle) will paralyze the whole South. Do you remember 
the effect of John Brown's attempt ? The severest blow he struck 
at the slave power was not that he disturbed a town and killed 
several citizens, but that he revealed the weakness of the whole 
South. Let Governor Wise of Virginia carry out his threatened 
invasion of the free states, not with twenty-three, but with two 
thousand and three hundred followers at his heels ; what will be 
the result ? As long as they behave themselves we shall let them 
alone ; but as soon as they create any disturbance they will be 
put into the station house ; and the next day we shall read in the 
newspapers of some Northern city, among the reports of the police 
court : Henry A. Wise and others, for disorderly conduct, fined S5 
(lovd laughter and applause) ; or, if he has made an attempt on 
any man's life, or against our institutions, he will most certainly 
find a Northern jury proud enough to acquit him on the ground 
of incorrigible mental derangement. (Continued laughter and 
applause.) Our pictorial prints will have material for caricatures 
for two issues, and a burst of laughter will ring to the skies from 
Maine to California. And there is the end of it.^ But behold 
1 See pp. 187-189 for the humorous treatment of secession by the Re- 
publicans. 



REPUBLICAN SPEECH BY CARL SCHURZ 271 

John Brown with twenty-three men raising a row at Harper's 
Ferry ; the whole South frantic with terror ; the whole state of 
Virginia in arms ; troops marching and countermarching, as if the 
battle of Austerhtz was to be fought over again ; innocent cows 
shot at as bloodthirsty invaders, and even the evening song of the 
peaceful whippoorwills mistaken for the battle cry of rebellion; 
(incessant laughter), and those are the men who will expose them- 
selves to the chances of a war with an antislavery people ? Will 
they not look upon every captain as a John Brown, and every 
sergeant and private as a Coppoc or a Stephens ? They will not 
have men enough to quiet their fears at home ; what will they have 
to oppose to the enemy ? Every township will want its home regi- 
ment, every plantation its garrison ; and what will be left for the 
field army? No sooner will a movement of concentration be 
attempted than the merest panic will undo it and frustrate it 
forever. Themistocles might say that Greece was on his ships; 
a French general might say that the Repubhc was in his camp ; 
but slavery will be neither on the ships nor in the camp ; it will 
be spread defenseless over thousands of square miles. This will 
be their situation ; either they concentrate their forces and slavery 
will be exposed everywhere ; or they do not concentrate them 
and their strength will be nowhere. They want war ? Let them 
try it ! They will try it but once. And thus it turns out that the 
very same thing that would be the cause of the war, would at the 
same time disable them to carry on the war. The same institution 
that wants protection will at the same time disarm its protectors. 
Yes, slavery which can no longer be defended with arguments, 
can no longer be defended with arms. 

"There is your dissolution of the Union. The Southern states 
cannot desire it, for it would defeat the very objects for which it 
might be undertaken ; they cannot attempt it, for slavery would 
lay them helpless at the feet of the North. Slavery, which makes 
it uncomfortable to stay in the Union, makes it impossible for them 
to go out of it. What, then, will the South do in the case of a 
Republican victory ? I answer that question with another one , 
what can the South do in the case of a Republican victory ? Will 
there be a disturbance ? The people of the South themselves will 
have to put it down. Will they submit ? Not to Northern dicta- 



272 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

tion, but to their own good sense. They have considered us their 
enemies as long as thej^ ruled us ; they will find out that we are 
their friends as soon as we cease to be their subjects. They have 
dreamed so long of the blessings of slavery ; they will open their 
eyes again to the blessings of liberty. They will discover that 
they are not conquered, but liberated. Will slavery die out ? As 
surely as freedom will not die out. 

"Slaveholders of America, I appeal to you. Are you really in 
earnest when you speak of perpetuating slavery? Shall it never 
cease? Never? Stop and consider where you are and in what 
days you live. 

This is the nineteenth century. Never since mankind has a 
recollection of times gone by, has the human mind disclosed such 
wonderful powers. The hidden forces of nature we have torn 
from their mysterious concealment and ^''oked them into the har- 
ness of usefulness ; they carry our thoughts over slender wires 
to distant nations ; they draw our wagons over the highways of 
trade ; they pull the gigantic oars of our ships ; they set in motion 
the iron fingers of our machinery ; they will soon plow our fields 
and gather our crops. The labor of the brain has exalted to a 
mere bridling and controlling of natural forces the labor of the 
hand ; and you think you can perpetuate a system which reduces 
man, however degraded, yet capable of development, to the level 
of a soulless machine ? 

"This is the world of the nineteenth century. The last remnants 
of feudahsm in the old world are fast disappearing. The Czar 
of Russia, in the fulness of imperial power, is forced to yield to 
the irresistible march of human progress, and abolishes serfdom. 
Even the Sultan of Turkey can no longer maintain the barbarous 
customs of the Moslem against the pressure of the century, and 
slavery disappears. And you, citizens of a Republic, you think 
you can arrest the wheel of progress with your Dred Scott decisions 
and Democratic platforms? (Enthusiastic cheers.) 

"Look around you and see how lonesome you are in this wide 
world of ours. As far as modern civihzation throws its rays, what 
people, what class of society is there like you ? Cry out into the 
world your wild and guilty fantasy of property in man, and every 
echo responds with a cry of horror or contempt; every breeze, 



REPUBLICAN SPEECH BY CARL SCHURZ 273 

from whatever point of the compass it may come, brings you a 
verdict of condemnation. There is no human heart that sym- 
pathizes with your cause, unless it sympathizes with the cause of 
despotism in every form. There is no human voice to cheer you 
on in your struggle ; there is no human eye that has a tear for your 
reverses ; no hnk of sympathy between the common cause of the 
great human brotherhood and you. You hear of emancipation 
in Russia and wish it would fail. You hear of Italy rising, and fear 
the spirit of liberty should become contagious. Where all man- 
kind rejoices, you tremble. Where all mankind love, you hate. 
Where all mankind curses, you sympathize. 

"And in this appalling solitude you stand alone against a 
powerful world, alone against a great century fighting, hopeless 
as the struggle of the Indians against the onward march of civiliza- 
tion. Use all the devices which the inventive genius of despotism 
may suggest, and yet how can you resist ? In every little village 
schoolhouse, the httle children who learn to read and write, are 
plotting against you ; in every laboratory of science, in every 
machine shop, the human mind is working the destruction of your 
idol. You cannot make an attempt to keep pace with the general 
progress of mankind, without plotting against yourselves. Every 
steam whistle, every puffing locomotive is sounding the shriek 
of liberty into your ears. From the noblest instincts of our hearts 
down to sordid greediness of gain every impulse of human nature 
is engaged in this universal conspiracy. How can you resist? 
Where are your friends in the North? Your ever ready sup- 
porters are scattered to the winds as by enchantment, never to 
unite again. Hear them trying to save their own fortunes, swear 
with treacherous eagerness that they have nothing in common 
with you. And your opponent? Your boasts have lost their 
charm, your threats have lost their terrors upon them. The at- 
tempt is idle to cloak the sores of Lazarus with the lion skin of 
Hercules. We know you. Every one of your boasts is understood 
as a disguised form of weakness ; every shout of defiance as a dis- 
guised cry for mercy. That game is played out. Do not deceive 
yourselves. This means not only the destruction of a party, this 
means the defeat of a cause. Be shrewder than the shrewdest, 
braver than the bravest ; it is all in vain ; your cause is doomed. 

T 



274 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

"And in the face of all this you insist upon hugging, with dogged 
stubbornness, your fatal infatuation? Why not with manly 
boldness, swing round into the grand march of progressive human- 
ity ? You say it cannot be done to-day. Can it be done to-mor- 
row ? Will it be easier twenty, fifty years hence, when the fearful 
increase of the negro population will have aggravated the evils 
of slavery an hundred fold, and with it the different ties of its 
extinction ? Did you ever think of this ? The final crisis will 
come with the inexorable certainty of fate, the more terrible, the 
longer it is delayed. Will you content yourself with the criminal 
words, 'after me the deluge'? Is that the inheritance you mean 
to leave to coming generations ? an inheritance of disgrace, crime, 
blood, destruction? Hear me, slaveholders of America. If you 
have no sense of right, no appreciation of your own interests, 
I entreat, I implore you, have at least pity on your children. 

"I hear the silly objection that your sense of honor forbids you 
to desert your cause. Imagine a future generation standing around 
the tombstone of the bravest of you, and reading the inscription, 
' Here Ues a gallant man who hved and died true to the cause — 
of human slavery.' What will the verdict be ? His very progeny 
will disown him, and exclaim, 'He must have been either a knave 
or a fool.' There is not one of you, who if he could rise from the 
dead a century hence, would not gladly exchange his epitaph for 
that of the meanest of those who hung at Charleston. 

"Sense of honor! Since when has it become dishonorable to 
give up the errors of yesterday for the truths of to-day ? to pre- 
vent future disasters by timely reforms ? Since when has it ceased 
to be the highest glory to sacrifice one's prejudices and momentary 
advantages upon the altar of the common weal ? But those who 
seek their glory in stubbornly resisting what is glorious, must 
find their end in inglorious misery. 

"I turn to you, Repubhcans of Missouri! Your countrymen 
owe you a debt of admiration and gratitude to which my poor 
voice can give but a feeble expression. You have undertaken 
the noble task of showing the people of the North that the slave- 
holding states themselves contain the elements of regeneration ; 
and of demonstrating to the South how that regeneration can be 
effected. You have inspired the wavering masses with confidence 



REPUBLICAN SPEECH BY CARL SCHURZ 275 

in the practicability of your ideas. To the North you have given 
encouragement ; to the South you have set an example. Let me 
entreat you not to underrate your noble vocation. Struggle on, 
brave men ! The anxious wishes of millions are hovering around 
you. Struggle on until the banner of emancipation is planted 
upon the capitol of your state, and one of the proudest chapters 
of our history will read — Missouri led the van and the nation 
followed!" 



APPENDIX C 

DOUGLAS DEMOCRATIC SPEECH BY STEPHEN 
A. DOUGLAS, RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA, 
AUGUST 30, 1860 1 

"Mr. President, I am conscious that you have, in the enthu- 
siasm produced by the circumstances with which you are sur- 
rounded to-day, done me more than justice in your presentation 
to this audience. I thank you, sir, sincerely for the kind terms 
in which you have been pleased to speak of me. It is a matter of 
pride and pleasure to be presented to the people of the Old North 
State, by a representative of Mecklenburg. (Cheers.) History 
will always preserve the fact that in North Carolina the first 
Declaration of Independence was declared to the world, and that 
Mecklenburg has the honor of being the county where that glorious 
deed was done. Carolinians have a right to be proud of that great 
event in her history, but while you pride yourselves upon it, you 
must remember, that the sacred obligation rests upon you and 
your children to maintain inviolate the principles which the Declara- 
tion was intended to perpetuate. 

"What was the grievance of which North Carolina complained, 
when she proclaimed to the world her separation from the British 
Crown ? what the grievance of which all the colonies complained ? 
and what were the objects they intended to accomplish by that 
Declaration? Independence was not their motive. They did 
not desire separation from England. On the contrary the first 
Continental Congress that assembled, and each succeeding one, 
until the Declaration was put forth, adopted an address to the 
Crown, and to the people, and to the Parliament of England, 
afnrming their devotion to the British people, their devotion to 

1 The Newbern Daily Progress, Newbern, North Carolina, September 5, 
1860. 

276 



DEMOCRATIC SPEECH BY STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS 277 

the British constitution, and their loyalty to the Crown of England. 
They did not desire separation from the mother country. They 
demanded a redress of grievances under the British constitution, 
and while they remained a part of the British Empire. What were 
these grievances ? You will find them in the Bill of Rights, put 
forth by the first Continental Congress, which assembled in 1774. 

"In that biJl of rights the colonies proclaimed to the world their 
desire to remain a part of the British Empire ; they acknowledged 
the right of Great Britain in Parliament to make all laws which 
affected the general welfare of the Empire, without interfering 
with the local and internal concerns of the colonies ; they acknowl- 
edged the right of the British government to regulate foreign 
affairs, to make war and peace, to regulate commerce, and to do 
those things that affected the general welfare of the Empire of 
Britain ; but they declared in that Bill of Rights that the colonies 
possessed the sole and exclusive power of legislating in their 
colonial legislatures over their domestic poHcy. That was the 
point on which they were prepared to sacrifice life if necessary, 
the right of self-government in each colony so far as affected their 
local and domestic concerns ; Great Britain refused to recognize 
that right, and before our fathers would surrender it, they deter- 
mined that they would resort to force and even carry force to the 
point of separation from, and an entire independence of Great 
Britain. 

"It is important to bear this fact in mind, in order to determine 
precisely the principles on which our government is founded. 
The British Parliament denied the right of the colonies to regulate 
their internal affairs, because they said that those colonies pos- 
sessed no other rights than those that the Prince of England had 
granted to them in their charters. Washington, Jefferson, and 
Hancock, and the heroes of that day told the king that they did 
not get their rights from the Crown, and they denied the power of 
the king or of Parliament to take those rights away. The colonies 
claimed that the right of local self-government was inherent in 
the people, derived from the Ruler of the Universe, the only power 
and jurisdiction of kings and Parliaments. Upon this point the 
Revolution turned. This right of local self-government as being 
inherent in the people was affirmed by the American Revolution. 



278 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

The Constitution, under which we Uve, was made for the purpose 
of confirming and perpetuating the hberties achieved by the Revo- 
lution. The question now arises whether we will maintain at this 
day those principles for which our fathers fought and which were 
secured to us by the sacrifices of the Revolution. 

"The abolitionist party at the North, some years ago, attempted 
to violate this great principle of self-government in the territories 
of the United States by the application of the Wilmot Proviso. 
They introduced into Congress a law for the purpose of prohibiting 
slavery everywhere in the territories of the United States, whether 
the people wanted it or not. The whole South, with a large portion 
of the Northern Democracy, resisted the Wilmot Proviso as a 
violation of the right of self-government, at the same time that it 
was a usurpation of power by the Federal government. In the 
discussion which took place, we who opposed the Wilmot Proviso 
appealed to the Revolutionary struggle as furnishing the grounds 
on which we ought to resist the interference by Congress with the 
domestic affairs of the people of the territories. We reminded the 
people then that the first serious point of controversy which ever 
arose between the American colonies and the British government 
was upon the slavery question. 

"For more than seventy years previous to the Declaration of 
Independence the colony of Virginia asserted her right to control 
the question of slavery through her colonial legislature. During 
the early portion of that period the Virginians passed laws to 
encourage the introduction of slaves and protect slavery in the 
colonies, but after a while they found the number of slaves in- 
creasing in a greater ratio than the white people, and being sur- 
rounded by large bands of hostile Indians, they became alarmed 
lest the savage Africans just introduced should unite with the 
savage Indians surrounding the settlement, and exterminate the 
whites. In order to prevent a calamity so fearful, the colony of 
Virginia passed laws adverse to the further introduction of slaves 
into that colony. The British merchants engaged in the African 
slave trade then appealed to the king to annul the legislation of 
these few adventurers in the colony of Virginia. They set forth 
that they had a right as British subjects to move from England, 
and carry with them their slaves as well as all other property, 



DEMOCRATIC SPEECH BY STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS 279 

and hold them in the colonies without reference to the legislation 
of the colonial legislatures. The king in council sustained that 
claim, annulled the local legislation of Virginia, and instructed 
its governor not to allow any more laws to be passed in the colony 
adverse to the slave trade ; but as late as 1772, only four years 
before the Declaration of Independence, the legislature of Vir- 
ginia adopted a memorial to his Majesty, telling him that unless 
he granted to the colony of Virginia the right to control this ques- 
tion according to the interest of their own people, he would lose 
his dominions in America. 

"Thus we find that the controversy on the slave question in 
the territories began seventy years before the Revolutionary War, 
reached down to the beginning of the war itseK, and led into the 
very contest that produced the final separation. Each of the 
other colonies passed laws also regulating the question of slavery. 
You did it in North Carolina. Some of your laws protected it, 
some encouraged it, and others discouraged it, just as you believed, 
or rather your ancestors, that the interests of this colony required 
at the time. So it was with each of the New England colonies. 
Some protected it, some invited it, others excluded it altogether, 
and others regulated it with a tendency rather against its encourage- 
ment; but the principle involved in that whole contest was the 
exclusive right of the people in each colony in their colonial legis- 
lature to regulate all their domestic affairs to suit themselves, 
without the interference of the British government. I presume 
that no person present will controvert the correctness of this 
historical proposition. 

"I have resisted the Wilmot Proviso from the time of its first 
introduction in Congress down to the present day, upon the ground 
that it violated the principles upon which our fathers fought the 
Revolutionary War. (Applause.) If British subjects in the 
colonies before the Revolutionary War were entitled to the in- 
herent right of self-governm_ent over their domestic affairs, I 
cannot see why the same right should not be guaranteed to the 
people of our territories since the Revolution. (Applause.) I 
have never claimed for the people of the territories any other 
right, or higher right, than our fathers maintained at the point 
of the bayonet for the colonies prior to the Revolution. (Ap- 



280 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

plause.) If an American citizen of North Carolina moving to a 
territory of the United States, is not entitled to as many rights of 
self-government there as a British subject before the Revolution, 
let me ask, what did you gain by the sacrifices of the Revolution ? 
(Applause.) 

"Who are the people of the territories that they are not capable 
of self-government ? You do not doubt that you people of North 
Carolina are entirely competent to make laws for your own govern- 
ment. You do not doubt but that the right of self-government 
is an inherent right in North Carolina. If it be an inherent right 
in this state, let me ask you, when you emigrate to Kansas, at what 
point of time do you lose that right ? Do you lose all the sense, 
all the intelligence, all the virtue you had on the wayside, while 
emigrating to a territory of the United States ? No man doubts 
your capability while you stay at home to decide for yourselves 
what kind of laws you will have in respect to negroes, as well as 
to white men. Are you any less capable after you have left your 
native land and gone to a territory? 

"Is there anything in the character of the men who emigrate 
from their native valleys to the plains and prairies of the West 
that renders them less fit for self-government than those who 
remain where they were born? Those of us who in early life 
left the old states, who penetrated into the wilderness, secured our 
homes, made our own farms, erected schoolhouscs and churches, 
made our fences and split our own rails (laughter), think that we 
know what kind of laws and institutions will suit our interests 
quite as well as you who never saw the country. (Applause.) 
We have quite as much interest in the laws under which we are to 
live as you have, who never expect to go to that country, and 
therefore have no concern about our laws. These are the opinions 
of a Northwestern man , a man who has spent his whole life on the 
frontier. You cannot convince us that we are not as good as our 
brothers who remain in the old states. I know there is some- 
thing in the human mind that leads every one to suppose that his 
own birthplace is the very center of civilization, and that there 
is nothing good beyond the range of his infant vision. When I 
was a child I thought that the mountains that surrounded the 
valley in which I was born were the confines of civilization ; and 



DEMOCRATIC SPEECH BY STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS 281 

my vision was limited by them ; and I fancied that beyond their 
boundaries there was nothing but border ruffians and outside 
barbarians. When, however, I crossed them and went into the 
next valley, I found there were just as good people there as I had 
left behind me, and so with the next and every step I took, from 
the East toward the setting sun, I unloosened and shook off 
unjust prejudice. 

" Ignorance has fixed around other people prejudices similar 
to those I then had. We in the Northwest have much more 
respect for you than you for us. We love you better than you 
do us. We love this Union better than you do, in consequence 
of the circumstances that surround us. You go into one of 
our settlements, in Kansas, Nebraska, Illinois, or any of them, 
and there you will find that a North Carolinian has settled down 
by the side of a Connecticut farmer, with a Virginian next to 
him, a New Yorker, a South Carolinian and representatives from 
every state around him, the whole Union being represented on 
the prairies by the farmers who have settled on it. In the course 
of time the young people of this society begin to visit, and in a 
little while the North Carolinian boy sees a Yankee girl he likes, 
and his prejudices against her people begin to soften. (Laughter.) 
In a few years the North Carolina and the Connecticut people are 
united, the Virginian and the Pennsylvanian, the Yankee and 
the slaveholder, are united by the ties of marriage, blood, friend- 
ship, and social intercourse ; and when their children grow up, 
the child of the same parents has a grandfather in North Carohna 
and another in Vermont ; and that child does not like to have 
either of those states abused. That child has a reverence for the 
graves of his grandfather and his grandmother in the good old 
North state and he has the same reverence for the graves of his 
grandfather and his grandm.other in the valleys of Vermont ; and 
he will never consent that this Union shall be dissolved so that he 
will be compelled to obtain a passport and get it viseed to 
enter a foreign land to visit the graves of his ancestors. You can- 
not sever this Union unless you cut the heartstrings that bind 
father to son, daughter to mother, and brother to sister in all our 
new states and territories. (Cheers.) 

"Besides the ties of blood and affection that bind us to each 



282 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

of the states, we have commercial intercourse and pecuniary in- 
terests that we are not willing to surrender. Do you think that a 
citizen of Illinois will ever consent to pay duties at the Custom 
House when he ships his commerce down the Mississippi to supply 
the people below ? Never on earth. We shall say to the custom- 
house gatekeepers of the Mississippi River that we furnish the 
water that makes that great river, and we will follow it through- 
out its whole course to the ocean, no matter who or what may 
stand before us. ("Good.") So with the East; we are bound 
to the people of the East by the same ties of blood and kindred, 
and you cannot sever this Union without blasting every hope and 
prospect that a Vv^estern man has on this earth. 

"Then, having so deep a stake in the Union, we are determined 
to maintain it, and we know but one mode by which it can be 
maintained; that is, to enforce rigidly and in faith every clause, 
every line, every syllable of the Constitution as our fathers made 
it and bequeathed it to us. (Cheers.) We do not stop to inquire 
whether you here in Raleigh or the Abolitionists in Maine like every 
provision of that Constitution or not. It is enough for me that our 
fathers made it. Every man that holds office under the Constitu- 
tion is sworn to protect it. Our children are brought up and 
educated under it, and they are early impressed by the injunction 
that they shall at all times yield a ready obedience to it. I am 
in favor of executing in good faith every clause and provision of 
the Constitution (loud cheers) and of protecting every right under 
it (cheers) and then hanging every man who takes up arms against 
it. (Cheers.) Yes, my friends, I would hang every man higher 
than Haman who would attempt by force to resist the execution 
of any provision of the Constitution which our fathers m-ade 
and bequeathed to us. (Loud cheers and cries, "That is Southern 
enough for us," etc.) A gentleman behind me says that that senti- 
ment is Southern enough for him and for you. I do not go for 
the Constitution because it is Southern or Northern, nor because 
it is Eastern or Western, but I go for it because my allegiance to 
the Constitution, my oath and my duty, my love for my children, 
and my hope of salvation in the future, makes it my sacred and 
bounden duty to vote for it and maintain it. (Cheers and cries 
of "Hurrah for Douglas.") 



DEMOCRATIC SPEECH BY STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS 283 

"I claim no rights for my state that I will not concede to you 
and defend for you and the whole South (cheers) ; I will accept no 
privileges for Illinois that I will not permit to North Carolina, and 
I claim no right in the territories for my citizens or for my property 
that I will not guarantee for every other state in the Union. I 
beheve in the absolute and unconditional equahty of all the states 
of the Confederacy. (Applause.) But I claim that I have the 
right to go to the territories and carry my property with me and 
hold it there and to have it protected on the same terms that you 
have in the slave holding states. ("Good.") But upon what 
terms, I ask, can I carry my property into the territories? 

" I carry it there subject to the local law. If I am a dealer in 
cattle, in horses, in sheep, in stock of any kind, I carry my prop- 
erty subject to the local law. If I am a dealer in dry goods, I 
go to the territories subject to the local law. If I find the local 
tax heavier on the peddlers than on the local merchants, I must 
either pay the tax or quit peddhng. ("Good.") If I am a dealer 
in groceries or liquors, I must carry my liquors there subject to 
the local law, and I had better inquire what that local law is before 
I start, and if on inquiry I ascertain that the Maine liquor law is 
in force there, I think that I had better carry my liquors some- 
where else and seek a better market for it. (Cheers.) The 
Northern man goes into the territories with his property subject 
to the local laws of the territory as the people may have made 
those laws through their local legislatures. Are you not willing 
to go upon the same terms ? (Cries, "We are as willing" "We never 
asked more.") Do you claim more than is granted to us ? ("No") 
You may go there also and carry your slaves with you subject 
to the local laws, in the same way that I can carry my goods. 
Equality of rights is the principle, and obedience to the local law 
is the only condition on which any man can go into the territories 
of the United States with safety. 

"I know that there is a class of pohticians who are in the habit 
of telling you that Congress will not grant you protection for your 
slave property in the territories, and Congress will not. When 
did Congress ever pass a law to protect any particular kind of 
property in the territories? Congress never yet passed a crim- 
inal code for an organized territory on the American continent. 



284 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

Murder is a crime in the territories, not under any act of Congress, 
but under the territorial law. Horse-stealing is a crime not by 
an act of Congress, but by the territorial law. And so with every 
crime against the person or the property of a citizen, no matter 
where. You are told that this is squatter sovereignty. Just 
such squatter sovereignty was established in North Carolina by 
the men who put forth the Declaration of Independence, and 
drove the agents of George III from the continent. It is the simple 
right of every people to make their own laws, and estabhsh their 
own constitutions according to their own interests, without any 
interference of any person outside their own borders. That is 
all it is. 

"Is not that a sound principle? Why, there are two classes of 
politicians who tell you that it is very unsound. Who are they ? 
First, the Northern abolitionists and the Black Repubhcans 
think it very unsound. They assert that it is the duty of Congress 
to prohibit slavery wherever the people want it. That is the doc- 
trine of the Abohtionists. They are in favor of Congress prohibit- 
ing it wherever it is necessary, and they say that wherever it is not 
necessary, the people do not want it, and that the people wall ex- 
clude it themselves. Here it is only necessary to say they are for 
Congress to prohibit and exclude slavery wherever the people do 
want it. There is another class of politicians who are in favor of 
Congress interfering in favor of slavery wherever necessary. 
They are not interventionists, however, except when necessary. 
When do they hold that intervention is necessary? Why, it 
is clear that it is unnecessary to interfere to protect slavery where 
the people are in favor of it, for in that case they will pass lav.'s to 
protect it themselves. For instance. New Mexico was in favor 
of slavery, and hence the people, two years ago, passed a law in 
their local legislature establishing a very efficient slave code, pro- 
tecting slavery in the territory. Hence it is not necessary in the 
estimation of the Southern Secessionists to protect it there, for 
the people wanting it will have it and protect themselves. It is 
only necessary for Congress to interfere, they say, and protect 
slavery where the people do not want it, and therefore will not 
protect it themselves. Thus you find that in this country there are 
two parties in favor of Federal intervention. The Black Repub- 



DEMOCRATIC SPEECH BY STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS 285 

licans of the North and the Secessionists and Disunionists of the 
South agree in respect to the power and duty of Congress to control 
the slavery question in the territories. They agree that Congress 
may control it and that the people of the territory ought not to be 
allowed to do so. Agreeing thus far, they differ on this point, as 
to what way Congress ought to control it. While the Northern 
fanatics say that Congress ought to control the question as against 
the South, the Southern Secessionists say that it must be controlled 
as against the North, Each party appeals to the passions, preju- 
dices, the ambitions of his own section, against the peace and 
harmony of the whole country. 

"Now, suppose you acquiesced in the demands of this Southern 
Secessionist party and allowed them to rally all the people of all 
the Southern states under a Southern intervention banner, and 
suppose we Democrats of the North would be craven-spirited 
enough to yield to the demands of a dominant majority in our 
own section, and join the cry of Northern intervention against 
slavery, and rally every Northern man under that banner. Then 
you have two sections of this Union separated, with a broad line 
between them, every Southern man on one side, and every North- 
ern man on the other, both abusing each other. Now, M^hat is 
your Union worth after that is accomphshed? Remember that 
the Union cannot survive the affections of the people on whom 
it rests. Whenever you have alienated Northern and Southern 
men, whenever you have separated them so far that they cannot 
belong to the same political party, and the same church, and cannot 
commune in the House of God at the same communion table, your 
Union is very nearly dissolved. This sectionalism has reached 
this point. It has reached the House of God and separated the 
members of the same church. That good old church in which 
I was born and reared, the old church in which my father and m.y 
mother, my grandfather and my grandmother and my ancestors 
for many generations were in the habit of communing, separated 
into a church North and South, and when we travel from one side 
of the line to the other, we are not permitted to go to the same 
table. And what has produced this estrangement? It is the 
agitation of the slavery question in the Halls of Congress. What 
good has been accomplished for anybody by the agitation ? What 



286 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

benefit has been conferred on the white man? what benefit has 
been conferred on the black man by this agitation ? It has ahen- 
ated friend from friend ; you have ralHed section against section 
by it ; you have spread mischief and dissensions and heartburnings, 
without any redeeming or corresponding advantage. What is 
the remedy for this state of things? I answer, the remedy is 
to banish the slavery question from the Halls of Congress; re- 
mand it to the people of the territories and of the states. 

" Let the people make just such laws as they choose, so that they 
do not violate the Constitution of the country. If they should 
pass a law in violation of the Constitution, the Supreme Court is 
the only tribunal on earth that can ascertain and decide that fact. 
(Applause.) If you go to a territory, and when you get there you 
do not hke their laws, and you think that a particular statute 
is unconstitutional, all you have to do is to make out a case 
under the law so as to have the question tried in the territorial 
courts, appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, and there 
get your case decided, and if that court decides that the law is 
unconstitutional, there is an end of it — it cannot be enforced. 
On the contrary, if it be decided that the statute complained of 
is constitutional, it must stand till the people of the territory get 
tired of it, and have sense enough to change it. If the people of 
the territory make bad laws, let them suffer under them till they 
are wise enough to make good ones. If they make good laws, 
let them enjoy all the advantages of their good laws. Let us act 
upon this principle, and there wall be peace between the North 
and the South. 

"I affirm to you that the Democratic party is pledged by its 
honor, its organization, its platform, and its principles, to this 
doctrine of the nonintervention of Congress with slavery in the 
territories. (Applause.) What man will be bold enough to deny 
that every Democrat in America up to the present hour was pledged 
to the doctrine of nonintervention? Read the platform of the 
party that nominated Cass in 1848, Pierce in 1852, and Buchanan 
in 1856. There you find the doctrine of the nonintervention of 
Congress with, slavery in the territories of the United States. Is 
not this so? What, then, has produced this sudden change? 
Nonintervention was a good doctrine four years ago, interven- 



DEMOCRATIC SPEECH BY STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS 287 

tion is necessary now. Four years ago there was no intervention 
with the slavery question in America, except among the Black 
Republicans of the North. I appeal to you, my fellow-citizens 
of North Carolina, without distinction of party to tell me whether 
every Democratic speaker in the state did not tell you that your 
rights, your honor, your equality in the Union, depended upon 
maintaining the doctrine of nonintervention by Congress with 
the question of slavery as affirmed by the Democratic platform? 
Now they tell you, that this doctrine which they taught you to 
believe, and making you to believe, to carry the state by a large 
majority for Buchanan, they now tell you that this doctrine, 
taught and preached four years ago, is little better than Black 
Republicanism. I stand to-day where I stood when the Seces- 
sionists eulogized me as the best friend that the South ever had. 
{Cries of "That's so.") 

"I defy them to show where I have changed a hair's breadth, 
and when I have heretofore defied them face to face to show it, 
the only answer they could make was, that I was constant and 
would not change. (Laughter and applause.) No. I would not 
change merely because presidents and caucuses, backed by ex- 
tensive patronage, said I must. (Cries of "Good," "That's 
right.") It is as much my right and duty to think for myself as 
it is for the President to do it for himself. (Cries of "Right.") 
I do not recognize the right of the Executive Department to inter- 
fere with the action or speech of any member of the Senate of the 
House of Representatives. (Applause.) So long as the President 
chooses to confine himself to the performance of his duties in 
obedience to the Constitution, I will sustain him to the utmost 
in the right to free and independent action. But whenever the 
President is permitted to say to the Senator or Representative of 
a sovereign state, ' Abandon your convictions, betray your constit- 
uents, do as I say, or I will remove j^ou from office and behead 
every friend you have in office throughout the land' ; whenever it is 
permitted to him to do that with impunity, then the Repubhc is 
but a sham and a mockery. (Applause.) There is no freedom, 
there can be no liberty, when the representative of the people is 
not responsible to his constituents instead of to the Executive 
power. ("It is despotism.") Yes, the worst of all despotisms 



288 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

is when the Executive can say to a man, ' Violate your conscience, 
betray your constituents, and follow me, or I will remove from 
office every friend you have got, and defeat you at home through 
the Executive power.' I speak with some feehng on this subject. 
(Applause.) 

"I have had some experience. I have been under the necessity 
in my lifetime of fighting Abolitionists and Black Republicans, 
aided and supported by a Democratic administration with all its 
patronage and power. For three years every Federal officeholder 
in Illinois has been required to oppose the Democratic and support 
the Republican ticket, as a condition to holding office, and even 
yet in the Northern states, and from one end of the land to the 
other, every officeholder is removed unless he works against the 
regular organization of the Democratic party. You are told now 
that there is a danger of Mr. Lincoln being elected President and 
that his election would be such a calamity that it would become 
your duty to dissolve the Union rather than submit to his domina- 
tion. What hope of an election has Mr. Lincoln ? None on earth, 
except through the assistance of the seceders at Baltimore. 
(Cheers.) After I was nominated there according to the usages 
of the party by two-thirds of all the votes cast, there being present 
two-thirds of the electoral college not objecting, these men bolted 
and got up a new convention. Now, let me ask you, is there a 
man in America who doubts that I would have beaten Lincoln, 
if the Breckenridge men had acquiesced in my nomination? 
(Applause.) Nobody doubts that Lincoln could never have 
carried but two states in the Union, Vermont and Massachusetts, 
but for that secession. What was their object in bolting? Was 
it not to beat me? (Cries of "Yes.") If it was, did they not 
know that the only way to do it was to divide the Democratic 
party in the North and the South and allow Lincoln to carry each 
one of these states by a minority vote ? The secession took place 
for the purpose of defeating me, and by the division of the party 
electing Lincoln. There was not a man engaged in the scheme 
who did not expect that his act was to elect Lincoln. There could 
be no other expectation, no other motive, no other hope, and I 
never have seen a man yet who would risk his reputation by deny- 
ing that Lincoln would have been beaten but for this division, 



DEMOCRATIC SPEECH BY STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS 289 

and that the clanger of his election grows out of it. Then how 
do they justify their course? Why, they say that it is better to 
have Lincoln elected than Douglas. Why? Why, they do not 
like Douglas. They do not hke his platform. Why do they not 
like the platform ? Because I stand now on the very platform 
on which they stood four years ago. And what confidence can 
you have in the integrity, in the truthfulness, in the honor of a 
man who will abuse the Charleston platform now, after he sup- 
ported it four years ago ? Were they cheating you then ? Were 
they cheating you at that time to get your votes ? If they were, 
how much confidence should you place in them now? (Cheers.) 
If they were honest then, it does not become them to abuse those 
of us who do not change quite as rapidly as they have done. 
(Applause.) 

"1 stand now where I stood then. I stand now where I stood 
when I brought forward the bill to repeal the Missouri restriction 
and organize the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. They can- 
not and do not pretend that I have changed. But they have 
started a story I learn since I got down here, that I went home 
and explained the Nebraska bill in a different way from what I 
had South, and said that it was the best abolition bill ever got up 
to prohibit slavery everywhere. I have tried to find out where I 
ever made such a speech, but those who made the charge do not 
name the place. I now say that no honest man will ever make 
the charge. (Cheers.) It is an invention of the enemy, and has 
been circulated by the mean author who knew it to be false or had 
no reason for believing it to be true. (Applause.) 

"I will tell you what explanation I have made in every North- 
ern state of my motive for passing the Nebraska bill, and repealing 
the Missouri Compromise. I have sustained that act, by the argu- 
ment that if slavery was right South, it was right North, and if 
it was right to leave the people to do as they pleased South of the 
Missouri Compromise line, it was right North of the line. The 
object was to allow the people to do just as they pleased both 
sides of 36° 30.' I assert that if the people of a territory want 
slavery, they have a right to have it, and if they do not want it, 
no power on earth should force it upon them. I go farther and 
say that whether the people will want it or not, depends solely 



290 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

upon the climate, the soil, the productions, and self-interest of the 
people where it exists. In the hot climate where the people can- 
not work in the open sun, where rice, the cotton plant, and sugar- 
cane flourish, you must have negro slaves to work there or you 
must abandon the country to the crocodile. In a cold climate 
where you have almost perpetual snow, and where the negro 
could not produce by his labor half as much as would feed and 
clothe him and furnish him wood enough to bake his hoe cake at 
night, you cannot force slavery to exist, because it will not pay 
for itself. Slavery, therefore, does not depend on the law. It is 
governed by climate, soil, and productions, by political economy, 
and you might as well attempt to pass laws by Congress compell- 
ing cotton to grow on the summit of the Rocky Mountains or rice 
to flourish on the granite hills of New Hampshire (laughter and 
applause) as slavery to exist where it cannot possibly exist. (Ap- 
plause.) I tell you that wherever climate renders slavery neces- 
sary, there it will go, and furthermore, the people of a territory 
will be the first to introduce it and pass all laws for its protection, 
but wherever chmate renders it unprofitable and no money can 
be made out of it, there you cannot force it to go. I care not how 
many laws you have, or how many armies to enforce these laws. 
Hence I said in my Freeport speech that no matter how the court 
might decide the abstract question, that practically slavery would 
not go where the people do not want it, for it would not be prac- 
ticable. That is what I said and that is all I said and that has 
been tortured into a declaration that I would not obey the decision 
of the Supreme Court of the United States. I like to be charitable, 
but I have not sufficient charity to believe that he, let him be 
who he may, who has represented me as saying I would not obey 
the Dred Scott decision, or any other decision of the Supreme 
Court, did not know that he was perverting and misrepresenting 
my whole idea.^ (Applause.) 

"I have made more speeches than any living man in defense of 
the Dred Scott decision as pronounced by the court, and I am as 
ready as any man to enforce the decrees of the court and to put the 
halter around the neck of all men who wish to resist the consti- 
tuted authorities of the land. (Applause, and "Hurrah for Doug- 
1 For Douglas' words at Freeport, see pp. 97-98. 



DEMOCRATIC SPEECH BY STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS 291 

las.") I do not desire to be misunderstood on these questions. lam 
being hunted down by a body of men who four years ago endorsed 
me, every man of them, knowing that I held the same opinions 
then that I do now. There is not a living man with intelligence 
enough to venture away from home alone who does not know that 
I have held these sentiments for years. {''Good," laughter and 
applause.) I have come down here now to meet you face to face 
and to utter these opinions just as I uttered them in the North- 
ern states; and in order to prevent them from misrepresenting 
me any more I have invited a friend of mine to take down every 
word and syllable as it falls from my lips and without any revision 
or my seeing it to hand it over to your papers here, if they will 
publish it, in order that the people of the North and the South 
may see whether I do not explain my doctrines in the South pre- 
cisely as I have explained them in the North." 

A voice. "We have no organ here but one." 

Douglas. "It is stated that my friends have no organ here 
but one. 

''I do not care how often I may make speeches in the Senate 
correcting the misapprehensions, they are never pubhshed here. 
Why? Certain gentlemen have made charges to the contrary 
and it would convict them if it acquitted me. I hold no opinions 
of these public questions that I wish to conceal anywhere, for I 
hold that so long as we live under a constitution, which is common 
to all the states of the Union, any political creed is radically wrong 
that cannot be avowed ahke in all the states of the Union. 

"Why cannot you of the South and of the North hve in peace 
together under this Constitution, as our fathers made it? The 
only reason is that there is an attempt to create uniformity through 
the action of the Federal government in the local and domestic 
institutions of the states. Mr. Abraham Lincoln, now the Black 
Republican candidate for the presidency, when some two years 
ago a candidate for the United States Senate against me, com- 
menced his opening speech with this proposition. I will try to 
give his precise language or as near as I can from recollection, 
and I believe I have quoted the passage a thousand times. He 
said that 'a house divided against itself cannot stand, this govern- 
ment divided into free and slave states cannot permanently en- 



292 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

dure, that either slavery must be extended to all the states, or it 
must be placed in the course of ultimate extinction in all the states ; 
they must become all free or all slave.' 

"Now that was his proposition. I replied to that speech the 
moment I got home. I took bold issue with him and made the 
canvass of Ilhnois on that proposition and one other. The other 
was, he assailed the Supreme Court decision in the Dred Scott 
case, and I defended it. These were the two issues upon which 
we fought that battle. Mr. Seward made his celebrated Roches- 
ter speech four months afterwards, in which he put forth his 
doctrine of the irrepressible conflict, borrowing it from Lincoln, 
who was the author and the enunciator of that principle, that 
the Union cannot exist divided into free and slave states, but must 
become all free or all slave. The Black Republican party is based 
upon the principle of making them all free states ; the Secession 
party is based on the theory that the territories and consequently 
the states must be all slave, whether the people want them so or 
not. I hold to the doctrine that uniformity in domestic institu- 
tions of the different states is neither possible nor desirable. Slav- 
ery must be good in one place and bad in another ; it may be neces- 
sary in one state and unnecessary in another. And so with every 
other domestic institution. Our fathers knew when they made 
this government that in a country as broad as this, with such a 
variety of soil, of climate, and of productions, there must necessa- 
rily be a corresponding variety of interests, requiring separate and 
different laws in each locaUty. They knew that the laws which 
would suit the granite hills of New Hampshire would be unsuitcd 
to the rice and tobacco plantations of the Carolinas. They knew 
that the regulations necessary in a mining district like California 
would be unsuited to the wheat and corn fields of Illinois. Hence 
they provided that each state should retain its own sovereignty, 
in order that each might have just such laws as it chose. This 
right, therefore, of each state to have different laws from every 
other one, lies at the very foundation of our government. Uni- 
formity, regardless of the wants and the conditions of the people, 
is the worst possible despotism you can inflict on any people. 

"Well, the Abolitionists of the North and the Secessionists of the 
South admit that this doctrine of the right of each state to regulate 



DEMOCRATIC SPEECH BY STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS 293 

and decide for itself is a good doctrine in the states, but will not 
do in the territories. They admit that in the states you have an 
inherent right to govern yourselves, but lose it when you go to 
the territories. Why not allow a territory to do it as well as a 
state? Why, they tell you that a territory is not a sovereign 
power, and therefore cannot do it; that none but sovereign 
powers have a right of self-government. Our fathers of the Revo- 
lution did not think so. The Revolutionary struggle began in 
the defense of the right of the dependent colonies, dependent 
territories, dependent provinces, to exercise this right of self- 
government as well as sovereign states. None of the Tories of 
the Revolution ever contended before that the right of self-govern- 
ment was to be restricted to sovereign states. George III and 
Lord North, his minister, and his Tory friends, on the continent, 
all denied the right of the people of these colonies to regulate 
their own domestic affairs. They all said that the people of the 
colonies had no rights except those the king granted them in the 
charters. The same old doctrine. Our fathers of the Revolution 
told the king that they did not get their rights from the king, but 
they got them from God Almighty. And the people of the terri- 
tories will be likely to tell you that they do not get their rights 
from Congress, they get them from a purer source. {Laughter.) 
From what I have said you will see that unless I am right in main- 
taining this principle of self-government for the people of the terri- 
tories, our fathers in the Revolution must have been wrong in that 
struggle. There is no other argument used against squatter 
sovereignty, as they term it, that they have not copied from the 
Tories of the Revolution, in almost its identical language. {A-p- 
plause.) But of course these gentlemen are very sincere in de- 
nouncing this doctrine of the noninterference of Congress. I wish 
they had been frank enough to denounce it before they had joined 
me in helping to sustain it. They knew when they adopted the 
Cincinnati platform that this was the doctrine. Read the plat- 
form. It declares in so many words, no interference by Congress 
with slavery in the states and territories. 

"At Charleston every friend I had from the Northwest offered 
to take the Cincinnati platform, word for word, as it read. They 
said it was not good Democracy. How came that platform to 



294 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

be adopted in 1856, if it was not sound ? You know it was adopted 
at the suggestion of the Alabama legislature, on four propositions 
drawn by Mr. Yancey, and when introduced into the Cincinnati 
convention received the vote of every delegate from every state 
in the Union, free and slave. They proposed it and we of the North 
said it was fair and just, and we took it. It was adopted by a 
unanimous vote, and four years after you are told that a man is 
a traitor to the South who stands by the pledge we all made at 
Cincinnati. There is something strange about this. I cannot 
change as rapidly as that. (Applause.) 

"If the Democratic party would stand now where they did then, 
there would be no trouble. In order to get out of the scrape, 
these men have turned round and charged me with having said 
I would not stand by the Dred Scott decision. I tell them now 
that any man who makes that charge hereafter will know that he 
is falsifying the truth. Then where is the cause of the trouble 
in the Democratic party? It is an attempt to introduce a new 
article of faith into the Democratic creed, in direct violation of 
the former creed of the party. It is an attempt again to introduce 
this slavery question into the Halls of Congress, and have Con- 
gress decide it. So long as that question remains in Congress, 
there will never be peace ; and if we expect to live together, we 
must agree to banish this whole subject from Congress, remand it 
to the people interested in it, and let the Supreme Court explain 
the Constitution in reference to each case as it arises ; then we will 
have peace." 

A gentleman. "There is in the minds of a large portion of the 
people of the Southern states an apprehension that the purpose of 
a certain class of extinct politicians of the South, is to provoke 
a division of the Democratic party upon this question of the 
platform for the purpose of electing Lincoln, and thereby without 
any overt act on his part, effect a dissolution of the Union. I 
desire to ask Judge Douglas respectfully to give to the audience 
all the evidence he has in reference to the purposes of these parties, 
and as we have heard that he was called out at Norfolk, by an 
elector on the seceders' ticket, to give his opinions as to his course 
as a Senator in the event of such dissolution, we desire him to re- 
peat it here, as we intend to ask Mr. Breckenridge what his course 



DEMOCRATIC SPEECH BY STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS 295 

would be also, being a Senator of the United States after the 4th 
of March, 1861." ^ 

Mr. Douglas. " Upon the point presented in the first suggestion : 
I have no evidence in respect to the designs and purposes of the 
seceders, which I am at liberty to use, except that which is known 
to the whole world. I know that Lincoln has no shadow of a 
chance of being elected, unless the Breckenridge men succeed in 
dividing the Democratic party, and thereby electing him through 
a minority vote. (Cries of " That's so.") Supposing that I should 
decline to-day, no man believes that Breckenridge could be elected. 
Supposing on the other hand, that Breckenridge declines to-day, 
no man doubts but I would be elected. Why, then, is he keeping 
the track, unless it is that Lincoln may be elected ? Then the first 
time I place my foot on Virginia soil in this canvass, I am asked 
by the head man on the electoral ticket, the man who leads the 
ticket, whether in the event of Lincoln being elected, the Southern 
states would be justified in a dissolution of the Union ; and whether 
I would go in for enforcing the law in the event of the Southern 
states seceding? A good many present at the time said that I 
ought not to answer the question, because the gentleman was 
opposed to me, and that under the circumstances it was discour- 
teous for him to propound such a question. I told them I was 
ready to answer it. I told them that in my opinion, the election 
of any man according to the forms and provisions of the Constitu- 
tion, is no excuse for dissolving this glorious Union. (Applause.) 
I would regard the election of Lincoln as a great calamity, to be 
avoided by all honorable means by patriotic men, North and 
South. But I will not consent that the mere act of the election 
of an unworthy man, or a worthy one either, by the people, accord- 
ing to the forms of the Constitution, is any excuse or justification 
for breaking up this Union of states. (Applause.) On the other 
hand, I said then what I say to you now, that I am in favor of the 
enforcement of the law, under all circumstances and in every con- 
tingency. (Applause.) If Lincoln should be elected President 
for the United States, or Breckenridge, and any man, after such 
election, should attempt to violate the Constitution of the country, 
or infringe on any law or right under it, I would hang him higher 
1 For the Norfolk questions, see pp. 180-181. 



296 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

than Haman, according to law. {Great applause.) I would have 
no more hesitation in hanging such a man than Virginia felt on 
hanging John Brown when he invaded her dominion. (Applause.) 
I do not think it would do the country any harm to try an experi- 
ment of the kind. (Laughter.) We have already demonstrated 
to the world that we are the greatest nation in the world in 
many respects ; we grow faster than any other people, we spread 
wider and more rapidly, and we annexed all countries adjoining 
to us with greater speed than can be done by any other people ; 
besides we can whip all we come in contact with. We are become 
a model for the friends of liberty throughout the world, and we 
are the admiration of all who love free institutions, while we are 
the terror of all tyrants. (Applause.) We have demonstrated 
our great national wealth, our military power and progress. We 
have proved our commercial power and productive capacity; 
but there is one thing remaining to be done to prove us capable 
of meeting any emergency, whenever any emergency arises. I 
trust that the government will show that it is strong enough to 
execute that final act, that is, to hang all traitors before it thinks 
of dissolving this glorious Union. (Applause.) If a bad man, 
or a dangerous man, or a fanatic should be made President of the 
United States, sustain the government, preserve the Union, stand 
by the enforcement of the laws, see that they are submitted to 
and obeyed ; and hang the man who refuses. (Applause.) 

"It will not do for these gentlemen to get up a program, if not 
designedly, yet knowingly leading inevitably to the election of 
Lincoln, and then to come and ask me to help them dissolve the 
Union because they elected him. If Lincoln is elected and does 
not give the seceders all the fat offices in the government, I say 
that he will be the most ungrateful wretch that ever lived. (Laugh- 
ter and applause; the repetition of the sentence ivas colled for, and 
when given, was received with fresh applause.) I never would re- 
ceive such support from a body of men without acknowledging it 
afterwards. (Laughter.) I hope my friend is satisfied on this point. 

"I have been talking at random, taking up these topics as they 
occurred, changing the threads of my discourse as suggestions were 
made or questions proposed ; for my object has been to answer 
frankly all the points on which my enemies have been attacking 



DEMOCRATIC SPEECH BY STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS 297 

me. I did not come here to solicit your votes. I have nothing to 
say for myself or my claims personally. I am one of those who 
think that it would not be a favor to me to be made President at 
this time. Not that I underrate the honor and the dignity of that 
high office, but I believe that I can render my country as much 
service while I am in the Senate of the United States for the next 
four years. I can there make as much reputation for myself as 
in the presidential chair, and if any attempt be made at disunion, 
leave a record to my children of which they will be more proud 
than the}' would be of my election to the Chief Magistracy of this 
glorious Repubhc. (Applause.) And hence my object in visiting 
the South is to explain how it is that these feelings of fraternity 
and kindness and brotherly love have been severed, and hostile, 
sectional parties organized in their places. I desire to know if 
there is not some common ground on which all constitution-loving 
men may rally and unite in putting down Northern Abolitionists 
and Southern Secessionists. (A voice, "There is.") I desire to 
know whether the old Democratic masses are not content to stand 
by their time-honored organization, by their time-honored plat- 
form, by their time-honored principles, to save the Union now 
as we have saved it on so many occasions before. (Applause.) 
I tell you that intervention by Congress means disunion, I care 
not whence it comes, whether from the North or from the South. 
(Applause.) I have too much respect for the intellect of all the 
interventionists, to believe that any one of them thinks that the 
Union could exist unless through the doctrine of nonintervention. 
"In 1850 the agitators of the North and the agitators of the 
South got up similar trouble to the one that now threatens us. 
The Northern free soilers demanded the Wilmot Proviso prohibit- 
ing slavery wherever the people wanted it. Yancey at the head 
of the fire eaters of the South demanded that Congress should 
protect slavery wherever the people did not want it. The issue 
then is precisely the issue now. The issue was pushed then as it 
is now, pertinaciously pushed till the best men in the country 
became alarmed, lest this glorious Union should fall a sacrifice to 
faction. Even the great Clay who had performed his glorious 
mission on earth, and who had retired to the shades of Ashland 
to prepare for another world, in his retirement heard the harsh 



298 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

and discordant notes of discord and sectional strife, and rousing 
himself, came forth from his retirement and resumed his seat in 
the Senate, that great theater of his great deeds, to see if he could 
not do something to restore peace to a distracted country. Union 
Whigs and Union Democrats assembled together every morning 
with Clay in the chair, Cass upon his right, and Webster upon his 
left, to see if by united council we could not devise some scheme 
to put down the Southern sectionalism and the Northern abolition- 
ism, and restore peace to the country. Now you are all aware 
that the Compromise measures of 1850 were the results of the 
councils. They were the joint work of the Union men of the 
country, without reference to politics. The measures adopted 
passed despite the joint efforts of all the disunionists and other 
patriotic men who had hoped something better than compromise 
might be adopted. But you all know that the compromise 
measures were adopted, and that they were based on the principle 
of the nonintervention by Congress with slavery in the territories. 
The Compromise measures of 1850, rejecting the Wilmot Pro- 
viso on the one hand, and intervention on the other, rejected both, 
and banished the slavery question from the Halls of Congress, 
and referred it to the people to do as they pleased. In 1852, 
when the Whigs assembled in national convention for the last time, 
and nominated Scott for the presidency, they affirmed the same 
principles of nonintervention. When the Democrats assembled 
at the same place and nominated Pierce, we affirmed the same 
principle of nonintervention by Congress with slavery in the terri- 
tories. But when we got to Baltimore in convention, we found 
there all the seceders, who with Seward and Sumner, had attempted 
to defeat the Compromise measures. They came and asked us 
to receive them back into the Democratic party. We told them 
that we would attempt to take them back on the condition that 
they renounce their opposition to the doctrine of noninterven- 
tion and stand by the principle in the future. They agreed to 
do it, and we received them back, and the convention unanimously 
affirmed the Compromise measures. Hence every Democrat 
in America in 1852 by his vote for Pierce affirmed the doctrine of 
nonintervention just as we hold it and understand it now, and 
every Whig in America meant the same thing by his platform. 



DEMOCRATIC SPEECH BY STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS 299 

"In 1856 the same principle was affirmed again. Buchanan 
accepted the office on that principle. In his letter of acceptance 
be went the full length of squatter sovereignty. He said that the 
people of a territory, like those of a state, should decide for them- 
selves whether slavery should be or should not be excluded within 
their limits. Breckenridge pledged himself to the same thing 
in his Lexington speech accepting the nomination to the vice 
presidency. Every Democrat should know that the party was 
pledged to that doctrine then. Now you find that the old Seces- 
sionists of 1850 are trying to play the same game over again, under 
the same leader for demanding intervention. Yancey was the 
leader then as he is now, with the same object in view now that 
he had then. The question is, Are we going to permit them, 
permit these interventionists. North and South, to alienate the 
people and break up the Union ? I tell you it never shall be done 
if I can prevent it. (Applause.) I love my children but I do 
not desire to see them survive this Union. I know of but one 
mode of preserving the Union. That is to fight against all dis- 
unionists. Beat them for the legislature ; beat them for Congress ; 
beat them for governor ; beat them for President (cheers) and 
teach them to love the Union at the same time that they say the 
Lord's Prayer, (Applause.) Then we will have peace. The 
only mistake we Democrats made was in tolerating disunionist 
sentiments in our bosoms so long. We never ought to have re- 
ceived them back when they went into the disunionist movement 
of 1850. Being back, some of them have become good citizens. 
We shall stand by them, but we shall apply the rigor of the law 
against every man that raises his hand against the peace and har- 
mony of the country. Why should we not live together now as 
our fathers did when they made the government? At the time 
of the Revolution Southern men were led to battle by Northern 
generals, and North Carolina bore bloody evidences of her gal- 
lantry at such times, and, on the other hand. Northern troops 
were led to battle by Southern generals. There was no sectional 
strife in Washington's camp. Then Northern men and Southern 
men shed their blood in a common cause on the same battlefield 
in order that they might transmit to their posterity a glorious 
inheritance. (Applause.) Now when you tell me that you are 



300 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

going to divide the Union, I ask where you will run your line? 
Will you run it between the graves of your ancestors ? Are you 
going to separate the father from the son? the brother from the 
sister? the daughter from the mother? What are you going to 
do with the glories of Bunker Hill, Yorktown, Saratoga, and King's 
Mountain? Are you going to divide them, too? It is a sacri- 
lege to talk about disunion. (Applause.) Let us obey the law, 
obey the Constitution, perform our duties under it, and then com- 
pel every man to yield obedience to it. 

"I thank you very kindly for the attention with which you have 
listened to me. I appreciate the compliment which this large 
concourse of people, assembled under such circumstances, implies. 
I shall depart from North Carchna as I did on many occasions 
before, with my heart full of gratitude for your kindness and for 
the favors you have bestowed upon me. I shall anxiously desire 
to return at some future time and renew my acquaintance with 
you." 



I 



APPENDIX D 

BRECKENRIDGE CAMPAIGN SPEECH BY WILLIAM L. 
YANCEY, NEW YORK, NEW YORK, OCTOBER 10, 
18601 

"Fellow-citizens of New York, I trust that an Alabamian may 
yet speak to the citizens of New York in the language of fellowship. 
I trust that the hour is not yet arrived in which, when an Ala- 
bamian speaks to his brothers of the city and the state of New 
York as brothers it will be a subject of jeering and hissing. We 
ought to be brothers, if we are not. There ought to be a brother- 
hood of citizenship throughout this vast country which would 
knit together its social and business relations in bonds so strong 
that the fanatics of the whole world could not burst them. {Loud 
cheers.) 

"I am not unaware, gentlemen, of the dehcate position which 
a speaker from the far South occupies, who in this hour of an 
excited political canvass, imdertakes to speak in one of the North- 
ern states, words of truth and justice for his section. (Cheers.) 
But I believe, my countrymen, that truth and frankness will win 
their way at all times to hearts that are swayed by truth, by gen- 
erosity and by justice. (Applause.) I do not disguise from you 
— I would not have it otherwise — that I speak to you here to- 
night as a Southern man. I speak to you here to-night for the 
home that I love better than any other home, for the state that 
I love better than any other state, for the section that I 
love better than any other section (cheers), my own, and surely 
it may not be amiss to speak these words in this spirit to a brave 
people who love their own homes and their own state, and their 
own section better than they do others. But I trust they have, 
and I desire to-night to inculcate in their bosoms that they shall 

1 The New York Herald, October 11, 1860. 
301 



302 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

have a respect and a loyalty and an allegiance to the common 
law and bond that binds us together in one Union. (Applause.) 
I feel, too, the difficulty in addressing a popular audience in this 
canvass in any other strains than as the advocate of the election of 
Breckenridge and Lane, whose friend I am. (Cheers.) But, 
my countrymen, events have happened, the wires are bringing 
to us the news now that the great state of Pennsylvania, to which 
good and conservative men have looked for safety in this canvass, 
has given way, and is about to cast its vote for a sectional candidate 
on a great issue, a candidate all of whose sentiments are at war 
with the Constitution of the country.^ I therefore feel it my duty 
to-night to try to rise above any party aspects of these questions. 
These aspects, great and interesting as they are at all times, sink 
into insignificance beside that other question that has arisen 
yesterday and to-day, if it did not exist before, our loyalty to an 
endangered Union under the Constitution. Therefore, passing 
aside the mere claims of men, passing aside these mere questions 
of party politics, and endeavoring to rise to the dignity of this 
great question, the safety of the country under the Constitution, 
I address you to-night in behalf of that union of good men which 
was inaugurated here in the City of New York, and whose in- 
fluence will, I trust, extend wider over this vast state, till it pro- 
duces a conservative majority in favor of the Constitution and 
the Union. (Cheers.) In speaking, my countrymen, in behalf 
of this great issue, I shall necessarily have to deal with the fate of 
my section. I shall necessarily have to deal with her position in 
this Union, past, present, and prospective. I shall necessarily 
have to deal with her relations to the Constitution and the Union, 
and her relations and connections with you in this section of the 
country. 

"It is another mistake that is made by some men — good men, 
doubtless, indulge in it but it is no less a mistake — that the South, 
on the great issue that divides the North and the South, has been 
on the aggressive. Far, very far from it. The readings of history, 
the teachings of your own age and your own experience, all dis- 
prove it. The South asks from this government but simple 
protection from wrong. (Cheers.) She claims and she must have 
it, and she v.-ill have it. (Tumultuous cheers.) She must have 
1 Pennsylvania goes Republican in a state election. 



DEMOCRATIC SPEECH BY WILLIAM L. YANCEY 303 

and she will have a recognized equality in the Union, or she will 
take it out of it. (Cheers.) We desire, my countrymen, the Union 
of the Constitution. We know no other. Convince us, as very pos- 
sibly it might be done, — and I am very far from thinking it can- 
not be done — that we can be a more prosperous people outside of 
the Union and the Constitution, and the Southern mind will reject it. 
The South is loyal to the compact which her fathers made with your 
fathers, and that compact she means to defend against all comers, 
whether in a majority or in a minority. She claims only equality 
within the Union, not asking of this government one single act that 
will aggress on any right that you have. Ready at all times now, as 
she has been in the past — and it is a part of her glory to refer to 
it — to defend your rights when assailed, whether from abroad 
or from within, the South has occupied in this canvass and in 
times past, on all issues, affecting her pecuhar institution, slavery, 
a defensive position. | 

"I defy the astutest declaimer of those who attack her, to point 
to one historical act of legislation which she has asked that is 
aggressive on the rights of this favored section. (Cheers.) It is 
quite common here to say that the South was aggressive in repeal- 
ing the Missouri Compromise. It was my lot to be in the public 
councils when that com-promise was proposed three different 
times to be apphed to the territories of Oregon and New Mexico, 
the territories acquired from Mexico. Three different times was 
that compromise proposed by Southern men." (Here there were 
demonstrations of hostility to the speaker, and cries of "Put him out.") 

Yancey. "No, let him alone, gentlemen, I want him to hear 
some truth. (Cheers.) Three different times did Southern men 
propose this compromise and three different times, while I was in 
the councils of the country, did Northern men vote it down. 
Up to the final admission of Oregon, in 1848, was that com- 
promise proposed again and again, and again and again was it 
rejected by the House by the Northern men. They claimed the 
Wilmot Proviso to be the law applicable to the territory. They 
claimed that they should have all. The South, while recog- 
nizing the injustice done her under the Missouri Compromise, 
was willing to stand by and adhere to the idea which appeared 
to be the settled policy of the country. The convention which 



304 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

was thought to be a convention of ultra men, the Nashville 
convention, proposed again the Missouri Compromise as the 
measure by which the South would stand. But finding that 
this compromise repeatedly proposed by her was rejected by 
those who had control of legislation in one of the branches of 
the government, the South threw herself on her constitutional 
position in the government, on the principle in the Constitution 
which made them equal in the territories ; she demanded an equal 
showing in the territories and she never demanded more. (Ap- 
plause.) It does not lie in the mouth of men who propose to take 
all the territories, and to exclude the owners of four millions of 
slaves from settling in these territories, to say that the South is 
aggressive, when they take from the South the privilege of forming 
more slave states out of the vast and magnificent domain of our 
common country. (Cheers.) 

I "Now, friends, we do not stand upon compromise. We stand 
upon something far higher than compromise, something more 
sacred than compromise. (Applause.) We stand upon the con- 
stitutional compact made by our fathers with your fathers, and we 
take that compact as it was interpretated by them and by the 
Supreme Court of the United States ; and with this faith the South 
takes her position, and from that position she will not recede, 
nor will she be driven so long as there is a Union worthy of being 
preserved. (Loud applause.) "What is that constitutional posi- 
tion ? It is this : we are the owners of four million slaves. How 
did we get them ? We have inherited them from the men of the 
Revolution, who fought the battles and wrote the Declaration of 
Independence, and maintained their principles by the spilling of 
their blood and the sacrifice of life, courage, and personal welfare. 
We have received this sj'Stem of labor as an inheritance from 
those men who, after the Declaration of Independence, wrote the 
Constitution. Now, in that instrument provision was made, not 
only for the increase, but for the safety and protection of the slave 
as property. But at this day it is propounded in high quarters, 
that there is an irrepressible conflict in the Constitution between 
free labor and the slave labor, and that that conflict must go on 
till Southern institutions and Southern citizens are all destroyed. 
Gentlemen, there is an irrepressible conflict between that gentle- 



DEMOCRATIC SPEECH BY WILLIAM L. YANCEY 305 

man and his policy and the writings of our fathers and the com- 
pact which they left us. (Applause.) In that irrepressible conflict 
all these good men who love the Union and the Constitution, and 
love justice, truth, and their neighbors at the South, must stand 
by the Constitution or else they will be recreant to the principle^ 
of constitutional loyalty. (Applause.) f 

"Now, what has the Constitution done for us? Our fathers 
were not only slave owners, but they bought slaves in Africa and 
brought them into this country. When the framers of the Con- 
stitution were drawing it up, Virginia desired to get rid of slaves 
but Massachusetts and several other states desired that it should 
be carried on (laughter and applause), and Massachusetts and the 
other states that joined with her succeeded in engrafting into the 
Constitution the provision that the slave statute should not be 
abrogated by the act of Congress, nor any amendment made to 
the Constitution, before the year 1808. (Applause.) Under the 
Constitution all other clauses but those relating to the slaves 
could be amended, if the people desired it ; but the friends of the 
slave traffic were so strenuous in regard to it that there is a distinct 
provision of the Constitution that the clause relating thereto shall 
not be amended. In fact, it was beyond the reach of constitutional 
amendment. It was a fundamental provision made by our fathers, 
one with the others, that it should not be altered or amended till 
1808. How does that stand with the doctrine of the irrepressible 
conflict? To me it appears that there is so httle agreement be- 
tween the two things that the Constitution knocks the irrepressible 
conflict on the head. That our fathers provided for the increase 
of the institution is beyond all doubt. They were not satisfied 
with the four hundred thousand slaves that existed at the com- 
mencement of the Revolution, but demanded that the number 
should be increased by importation until the year 1808, and in 
that year no less than one hundred thousand slaves were imported 
into the country under the authority of the Constitution, and it is 
the descendants of these slaves who are now scattered throughout 
the Southern states. And these are the slaves, guaranteed to 
us by the Constitution, whom Mr. Seward and Mr. Lincoln pro- 
pose to take away from us by infamous legislation. (Applause.) 
Now, gentlemen, what our fathers deemed a thing so sacred that 



30G PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

they demanded a constitutional guarantee for its increase, con- 
tinuance and protection as property, sliould certainly be no less 
so to their sons, and they, therefore, hold that they shall not be 
robbed of their slaves under any form of law. (Applause.) 
I "Not only did our fathers provide for the increase of this species 
of property, but for its safety against attacks that are made against 
it to this day. It has often been said that the Constitution of the 
United States is inspired with something almost divine. These 
great men who framed it for the common good seem to have 
known what would be the ultimate fate of the negroes in the 
North ; they seem to have foreseen that they would die out in 
the colder states of the North, and that, as a consequence, they 
would seek to locate themselves in the more genial regions of the 
South. Such has been the fact. And our fathers were not ig- 
norant either that there would always be men along the borders 
and near the slave states seeking to mislead the slaves ; and there- 
fore they took the precaution of inserting into the Constitution 
the provision that all fugitive slaves should be given up, and made 
it incumbent on the states that they should aid in the execution 
of the laws, and that they should cause all escaping slaves to be 
surrendered. Therefore, while there were provisions for the in- 
crease and the spread of the institution, its protection was also 
amply provided forj Now, the law is given to government for 
carrying out its great mission, the protection of life, liberty, and 
property. Our fathers increased the power of protection and this 
was done by the Constitution. 

I' It was further given to the slaveholding states to have repre- 
sentation for three-fifths of their slave property. Although the 
slaves are not citizens under the form of our government, yet our 
fathers had a three-fifths representation by virtue of their possess- 
ing these slaves.^ But then they were organized property for 
taxation, and under the Constitution direct taxation is to be im- 
posed in proportion of three-fifths of the slave population. Here, 
then, is the constitutional increase of the institution of slavery; 
also the safety guaranteed to it under the provisions of the Fugi- 
tive Slave Act. It is an acknowledgment of property to be taxed 
as such when the nation chooses to derive a revenue from it. 
"Under this compact the South has existed and prospered, and 



DEMOCRATIC SPEECH BY WILLIAM L. YANCEY 307 

you in the North, in conjunction with the South, have derived 
much benefit from slavery. It has been said that the South is 
not prosperous owing to this institution, and they undertake to 
compare the North and the South in a very invidious manner. 
I do not desire to make any such invidious comparisons. I re- 
joice in the prosperity of this nation. I rejoice that the North is 
a great, a prosperous, an intelUgent, and a happy people ; also 
that my section is not behindhand in any of those qualities in a 
nation which make up a true and great manhood. (Applause.) 
rWhen the Revolution commenced, the South possessed a popula- 
tion of 812,000 whites and 450,000 slaves. The North, on the 
other hand, had 1,900,000 whites and 47,000 slaves, making in 
the aggregate about a half million slaves in the two sections. 
How is it now? According to the best statistical statement, 
taken from official sources, there are now in the Northern states 
18,000,000 whites, and in the South 8,000,000 whites and 4,000,000 
slaves. Now, this will show that population in the North and in 
the South has kept pace very well together. In fact, the North 
has not kept quite up to the Southern ratio in increase of popula- 
tion ; and this, notwithstanding the great advantages in this 
respect which you have had from 4,000,000 foreigners, a benefit 
which does not extend to the South. The natural increase of the 
South surpasses the natural increase of the North, and it is re- 
markable that the natural increase of the slaves is equal to their 
masters, considering that they are in a sickly country exposed to 
noonday heat of a Southern sun, and the masters are protected 
by exemption from real manual labor. Yet the black population, 
notwithstanding all the difficulties under which they labor, and 
which are incident to their condition, have kept pace with those 
who are in happier circumstances of life. It proves that our in- 
stitution is well calculated to improve their condition^) They 
are not treated with cruelty or tyranny as a general thin^l^though 
in all communities there will be found hard men. I have no doubt 
it is so in New York, but not greater than it is in the South, though 
to an equal extent. Now, these facts about the census cannot be 
denied. Figures, they say, when properly arranged and calcu- 
lated, cannot lie, although I believe they can very often be located 
in such a manner as to tell very big lies. (Laughter.) 



308 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

''Look, now, at our industry, and it will favorably compare 
with yours, although you in the North are peculiarly an industrious 
people. But the men of the South, like those of the North, have 
not been wasting the time that God has given them. Look at 
the exports of 1848 and 1849. There has been a large amount of 
surplus production in the two sections, which we do not require 
for our own uses, but export to foreign countries, and it is well 
known that a nation is generally judged by the quantity of sur- 
plus products which it exports to other parts of the world. There 
was exported last year for the whole country products to the 
value of $353,894,000 ; $57,000,000 of which was in specie, leaving 
as the result of produce and actual labor, $278,292,000 for the year 
ending June, 1859.^ Now, of this vast quantity of property, it 
will not be uninteresting to inquire how much has come from the 
greatly despised Southern section, where it is said that labor 
meets with no reward and that everything is demoralized with 
the white and black men. What is it? Let the agitators and 
political speculators look at the actual figures. The North 
exported $5,281,000 exclusively, with produce amounting to 
$650,000,000, and $150,000 in ice. There was exported in that 
year, $84,417,000 of mixed productions common to both sections 
of the country, as to North Carohna, Tennessee, Mississippi, and 
Illinois, Ohio, and other states. Now, it is deemed a fair calcu- 
lation that the North has one-third of that. The whole product 
then is $188,692,000 ; of this the following is the proportion of 
the articles exported : cotton, $161,434,000 ; tobacco, $21,074,000 ; 
rosin and turpentine, $3,554,000 ; rice, $2,207,000 ; tar and pitch, 
$141,000; brown sugar, $96,000 ; molasses, $5000 ; hemp, $9000, 
(A voice, "Hemp is still growing, I hope.") A gentleman says he 
hopes hemp is still growing. I am glad that hemp yet grows, 
and I am only sorry that there is not more of it. {Laughter and 
applause.) What is the result of these figures ? They show that 
the South in the fiscal year alluded to exported $217,000,000, and 
the North exported only about seventy, no, not seventy, but about 
sixty-one millions of dollars, exclusive of the amount of specie 

1 The figures given in this paragraph either were intentionally garbled 
by Yancey, or the reporter in taking down the speech made mistakes ; 
as given, the figures are meaningless. 



J 



DEMOCRATIC SPEECH BY WILLIAM L. YANCEY 809 

shipped from California, which adds about one hundred and ten 
or one hundred and twelve million, and the exports of the South, 
therefore, are nearly double. Now the agitators, speculators, and 
others would do well to think of this, and it would be right for these 
philosophers to study the figures before they undertake to abuse 
my section of the Union. 

"In the present year the results are much larger in the favor of 
the South, as $195,000,000 is the increase of the cotton crop. 
It will be found that this is not an isolated case. The cotton 
crop is more extensive generally than in previous years. But 
no matter how far this may go, the results will show that there 
have been large increases in the production of tobacco, rice, 
etc. On the whole, the South produces more than the North, 
including the specie from California. This shows that this in- 
stitution is valuable, not only to the South, but to the North. 
The prosperity we have derived is great, and you have legitimate 
share in it." 

Mr. Yancey then proceeded to speak at length concerning the 
differences between the chmate of the North and of the South 
and of the capacity for active labor possessed by the Northern 
men, and the beneficial results following from those fraternal 
relations. " This labor is the means of producing much wealth 
from the South, and while the white people of the North can 
undergo continuous labor, those of the South, exposed as they are 
to the heat of the chmate, cannot do so. No white man can work 
at laborious occupation under the fervid heat of the South. The 
consequence is that every one works in the North. The merchants 
here in the counting house works as well and as hard as his clerk 
to whom he pays $1000 or $1500 annually, and with a far greater 
sense of responsibility. 

"The commerce of the North and of the South in its rapid de- 
velopment has also been the means of producing wealth to both 
sections, in the friendly competition with other countries in carry- 
ing merchandise abroad. New York is the great heart of the 
whole commerce of the country. Commerce has its seat here, 
large-headed and large-hearted commerce, and here it takes these 
products and disperses them, two-thirds through this part of the 
country and then over the world. (Applause.) The prosperity 



310 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

of the whole country depends on the advancement of New York. :v 
(Applause.) Now, then, look at your coasting trade. Look at it | 
and you will find that it is a most gratifying spectacle. Then ' 
see what are the demands of the South. The South asks nothing 
from there but that you will not allow any one to steal away her 
niggers. (Laughter and applause.) Enlarge your jails and peni- 
tentiaries, reenforce and strengthen your police force, and keep 
the irrepressible conflict fellows from stealing our niggers, and we 
are satisfied. (Applause.) Now, is there anything unreasonable 
in that ? C No ! no ! '') It is the voice of reason ; it is the voice 
of loyalty ; it is the voice of common sense, which those specu- 
lating theorists do not have. (Applause.) Now I say that we 
ask nothing else. 

"When has the South come and asked you to protect her cotton ? 
Gentlemen, we defy the world. England, with her acknowledged 
power in the world, is seeking a spot in which to make cotton, an 
aggression probably for the very reason of conquering nation after 
nation, whose fertile soil and climate are fitted for trying the ex- 
periment. England, after all her efforts has raised cotton at the 
cost of fifty cents per pound, which she has sold in the market 
in competition with American cotton at ten to fifteen cents per 
pound. We ask no premium against competition with the culti- 
vation of rice and tobacco. The peculiar products of Southern 
labor defy the competition of the civihzed world. The South in 
that respect is independent of the world. (Applause.) 

"Now, how is it with you? I know you will bear with me 
when in a friendly way I undertake to trace the history of legisla- 
tion as regards Northern labor. How often has New England 
beseeched Congress for protection to her cotton and woolen manu- 
factures? How often has protection been asked for your iron 
manufactures ? And you, gentlemen, here in New York, Boston, 
and Philadelphia, have got protection to your shipping interests. 
Just think of it a moment. Nobody can compete with you for 
our carrying trade. Let the English or French ships anchor by 
the side of a Yankee skipper in the harbor of Mobile Bay. I take 
to them my one hundred and fifty bales of cotton and I say to the 
English captain, 'What will you take this to New York for?' 
'For a dollar a bale,' says he. Can I send it by him? The 



DEMOCRATIC SPEECH BY WILLIAM L. YANCEY 311 

Yankee alongside says, 'I will take it for two dollars a bale.' 
What am I bound to do? To give it to the Yankee skipper be- 
cause our coasting laws protect the shipping of the Northern 
states to the exclusion of all others. Consequently your shipping 
is encouraged. The carrying trade is almost exclusively con- 
fined to the products of the South. England, France, and Hol- 
land cannot compete with you, owing to our laws. Now we have 
no such law protecting our industry. We cannot deal in shipping ; 
you do. And yet we do not complain. 

''Now, how is it with you? There is a tariff of from twenty to 
thirty per cent on your iron manufactures. To be sure we derive 
a revenue from this, but you derive also a premium to your labor, 
and consequently the labor of the North, that I have been com- 
paring to the labor of the South, has the benefit of a premium 
given to it by this tariff. The South has no such benefit ; she asks 
none. She can afford to let you have all that. (Applause.) I 
know that some of our Southern friends complain of this, and say 
that it Is not exactly right. South Carolina, you know, once 
brought us very near the verge of dissolution in consequence of 
what she beheved a discrimination between the industries of the 
country. But this has passed away ; there is comparative mutual 
understanding now. We have come somewhere near a substantial 
agreement about these matters. Less protection is demanded 
now than formerly. You can compete much easier with foreign 
industry than formerly, and by and by, perhaps, you will be able 
to throw it off in the coastwise trade. But the fact remains that 
your Northern labor demands and receives from the government 
a premium, and that Southern labor receives none ; and yet it 
outstrips the labor of the North in a fair contest. (Applause.) 
Now this protection is very valuable to you, and it is also valu- 
able to us. It is valuable to the whole country ; and I do not men- 
tion these facts for the purpose of producing any fear. I trust 
that you are not on that level in which your loyalty can only be 
measured by the amount of money you make out of this govern- 
ment. (Laughter and applause.) 

"Now, if this is the result, then comes up another question. 
This mutual interchange of commodities throughout our vast 
country, the gold of California, the grain of the West, the manu- 



312 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

factures, the commerce ; what more ? What a sound, magnificent 
basis is presented in these states for a prosperous Union under 
our glorious Constitution. (Applause.) We aid each other with 
a proper sense of brotherhood, a proper sense that we are citizens 
of the same country, that we have a Hke common protection, and 
should deal out justice to each section with an equal hand, not 
raising up this section at the expense of any other, knowing no 
section, but dealing with them all in the same spirit of justice. 
That spirit should exist throughout the land. But this cry of 
the assailant that now resounds throughout your borders, from 
the rock-bound coast of Maine to the golden sands of Oregon, 
this cry of the assailant, which, it is said, is made by a majority 
of your people, that this great institution, in itself worth|S2,800,- 
000, 000 V worth incalculably more than that when all its social 
relations which are interwoven with it and which must go down 
if that institution is destroyed — this cry of the assailant of this 
great and valuable institution, now presents an issue. I ask you, 
gentlemen of New York and of this Northern section ; I ask you, 
an integral part of the eighteen millions that have been held up 
in terrorem by one unwise braggart son of your section as able 
to conquer eight million (sensation) ; I ask you, my countrymen, 
what benefit will it be to you to have all this vast industrial and 
social relation of the South destroyed? (Applause.) But it 
is not to be destroyed. 

It is said that cotton, which is so valuable, which builds up the 
South and the North, which keeps the world going, out of which 
nations make their profit, derive their comfort, that this incom- 
parable article can be raised by white labor. How utterly absurd 
to any one who knows anything of our climate, of our system of 
labor, and of the necessities of the cotton crop. We have a tem- 
perature in the summer ranging in the open air from one hundred 
and ten to one hundred and thirty degrees Fahrenheit. No white 
man can stand labor under that burning sun, and they do not. 
The owners of the slaves seek your genial climate. They fill all 
your watering places, they fill the hotels of this vast metropolis ; 
they travel all over your rivers and lakes, and stop at your places 
of resort, seeking not for recreation, but to get rid of the miasma, 
the fever, the hazards of life that are incurred in the hot summer 



DEMOCRATIC SPEECH BY WILLIAM L. YANCEY 313 

\jlimate in the summer months. And how do the overseers avoid 
tXese things ? They protect themselves with all the care that a 
man can who does not labor. They often go to the fields with 
umlrellas over their heads, or seek the shade of a friendly tree, 
while they see the slaves working in the broiling sun without a 
hat or anything to protect their heads. Why, the negro can al- 
most, 'ike the eagle, look the sun in the eye. (Laughter and 
applaust.) 

"These glorious sons of toil, who are satisfied with their con- 
dition, love their masters, contribute to the wealth of the world, 
and are the best population under the sun, if these philosophers 
will only let them alone. {Great laughter and applause.) Billions 
fevers and congestive chills are things pecuhar to a climate where 
heat and moisture prevail ; and great heat and moisture are neces- 
sary to the cultivation of the cotton crop. But the diseases which 
heat and moisture generate do not affect the black man. He 
moves among them perfectly unharmed. He is fitted for such a 
climate. Hard labor and the privations incident thereto do not 
destroy the negro. Of course, they are under the commands of 
a master, who gives them their food and their clothing, and from 
the natural selfishness which is common to all men, they are occa- 
sionally kept at work longer than they ought to be. We do not 
pretend to deny these things. But the census shows that these 
people increase as fast as the whites. Take the rate of their in- 
crease since the Revolutionary War and compare it with that of 
the whites, and see if this is not so. This shows that the climate 
is fitted to them and they to the climate. 

"Not so with the v/hite race. I have lived at the South. Sev- 
eral years ago I passed over a road leading to Tuscaloosa, in Ala- 
bama, called the Old Line Creek Road. It is a level cotton region. 
When I went to Alabama in 1836, what do you think that was 
called ? It was called the Widows' Road. There was not a male 
head of a family living there. The women lived because they 
were not exposed to the noonday's sun nor to the night air. Being 
engaged in household duties they escaped the mortality that car- 
ried off nearly every man living on that road. I mention this to 
show you the nature of the Southern climate. No man exposes 
himself to the heat of the sun without great danger, and we have 



314 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

to take great care of ourselves. The white man cannot stand the 
climate ; the negro can. 

"But even admitting that the white man can stand it, he cannJt 
make the cotton crop. It is planted about the first of Apri? — 
the last week in March and the first week or ten days in April — 
and from that time until the crop is gathered, which is not before 
the first of January if there is a fair crop, there is not one veek of 
intermission, not one week that the laborer can be spared without 
danger and loss. Continuous labor is absolutely necessary for 
the safety and preservation of that plant all through the heat of 
the summer. The cultivation of cotton is remarkable. I have 
seen a field of five or six hundred acres in some of our line cotton- 
growing counties in which there was not a spear of grass to be seen. 
The cultivation requires more care and attention than any of 
your garden products, and demands regular, continuous, persistent 
labor. Now, don't you know that white lal)or is not continuous 
and persistent during the whole season? Look at your strike. 
What do you think the effect of one like that that took place in the 
town of Lynn amongst the shoemakers, would be among the cotton 
crops of the South ? Why, a hundred millions would be lost to 
the world ; possibly a revolution in England, and in all the civi- 
lized world, owing to the want of this cotton. (Applause.) There- 
fore, I say in view of the independence of white labor, striking off 
when it i:)leases for better wages, seeking for more genial employ- 
ment, going off, it may be, to some more inviting region, that with 
the white labor the cotton crop of the South could not be raised ; 
such labor could not be depended upon. Instead of having four 
and one-half million cotton bales as now, if we depended upon 
white labor, in my opinion the product would not amount to two 
million bales. How could the civihzed world spare two and one- 
half million bales, merely to gratify these speculating philosophers ? 
(Laughter.) 

"So, then, gentlemen, this institution is necessary to the civiliza- 
tion of the world, is necessary to your prosperity as well as to ours. 
It is an institution, too, that doesn't harm you, for we don't let 
our niggers run about to injure anybody (laughter) ; we keep them ; 
they never steal from you ; they don't trouble you even with that 
peculiar stench, which is very good in the nose of the Southern 



( 



DEMOCRATIC SPEECH BY WILLIAM L. YANCEY 315 

man, but intolerable in the nose of a Northerner. (Laughter.) 
None of these things trouble you. The police force that we re- 
quire troubles only ourselves; the expense of maintaining it is 
ours, and by the bye, that reminds me of an interesting item that 
you ought to consider. The masters have to take care of the slaves. 
Now, what do you suppose is the cost of the clothing of these four 
million of negroes, which the North furnishes ? The cost is some 
twenty million of dollars. Twenty million dollars worth of cotton 
and woolen goods are bought at the North ; but five millions in 
the shape of axes, hoes, chains, iron castings, etc., are paid to the 
North for the purpose of carrying on your industry. The South 
does not choose to devote her labor to these things. She is willing 
to raise what she can and sell it at a fair price, and then to go to 
you and buy that which you can raise cheaper than herself. They, 
spend in the Northern states on an average $10 per annum for each 
slave, which would be $40,000,000. 

"And these $40,000,000 Mr. Seward sneers at and thinks it 
folly to regard the trade as an important one. He would not 
legislate of course in relation to it, and Lincoln I presume would 
never think of making it a material subject of consideration in the 
way of legislation. They want to carry out their peculiar theo- 
retical views in relation to religion and morals. (Laughter.) Well, 
I hope, gentlemen, as you are said to be a very conscientious 
people, descended from the Puritans and also the Dutch (laughter), 
who are a conscientious people, I hope that you will intrust the 
legislation on morals and religion to the Great Ruler of the Universe 
and won't let Lincoln and Seward have anything to do with it. 
(Great laughter.) Now these gentlemen, who are disposed to legis- 
late for material interests, are not going of course to consider this 
institution one of that class, no matter how much you suffer. 
They scoff at the merchants who talk about fusion for the purpose 
of saving the country and its industry. I may be mistaken, but 
I am ready to sit at the feet of philosophers who will teach me 
better ; but my idea is that the government was instituted to pro- 
tect material interests alone; that it is not a school for ethical 
theories ; that we are all to worship as we think proper ; and that 
our morals are in no ways meddled with except that we shall be 
required to act with decency and order. All these things are left 



316 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

to the individual consciences and to the consciences of pubhc 
opinion governing the states. Government deals alone with the 
material interests of life, and is designed for the protection of the 
liberty of our own citizens and of their property. It sets up no 
school of morals or religion, touching the right of one man to hold 
in bondage another man which our fathers settled. 

"Our fathers settled the right to hold the negro in bondage for 
his labor ; not, of course, to hold property in man. I do not hold 
property in any black man as a man ; as a man he belongs to my 
state and is protected by it. My state says : ' You shall not give 
him an unusual or cruel whipping; if you do, I will fine you and 
imprison you, one or both, at the discretion of the judge or the jury. 
As a man you shall feed him and shall not starve him ; if you do 
not give him a fair allowance, you will be indicted. It is a mis- 
demeanor and you shall be punished for it.' As a man I may work 
him and exact a proper degree of labor, and no further. I cannot 
take his Hfe or injure his limbs; if I do, I am hable to the same 
penalties as if it were a white man." 

A voice. "Suppose, as a man, he runs away." {Laughter.) 

Yancey. "Then I recover him, because the Constitution says 
that he shall be delivered up. {Great cheering.) Gentlemen, 
the negro has got legs, you may be certain, and when any of these 
speculating philosophers go down South, they make him think 
that he is one of the worst-used people in the world, and he runs 
away, and after being half-starved in the brambles and briars, he 
comes home hungry and ragged, and is glad to go to work again. 
{Laughter.) Running away negroes is a common thing. Now we 
have horses that run away. {Laughter.) Does that deprive them 
of being property ? If any man takes a runaway horse and appro- 
priates him, the law calls it theft. So with a negro. Now, I wish 
you to enforce that law when my negroes run away. {Applause.) 

"Now I say that this institution is assailed, and I will give you 
a Southern man's view which we as defendants occupy, and the 
position in which our assailants stand, as we conceive. They say 
that there shall be no more slave trade ; that that is in accordance 
with the spirit of the Constitution and the teaching of the fathers. 
All the vast territory, that belongs to the government and which 
the Supreme Court has said the government holds in trust for the 



DEMOCRATIC SPEECH BY WILLIAM L. YANCEY 317 

people of the various states, for Alabama as well as for New York, 
shall be kept free of slavery. There is an area of territory belong- 
ing to the United States large enough to form twenty states equal 
to New Jersey or Maryland, and even, I believe, South Carohna. 
In all this territory the South is to have no share whatever in 
settling with its property. The South wants the advantage of 
a community of young and sister states around her to sustain her 
against the conflict of sectional passion ; she wants the advantage 
of a spread of her institution which the figures show you is as much 
for your prosperity as for hers. In other words, if there are to be 
no more new slave states, the general prosperity is to be curtailed 
in precisely that proportion. (Applause.) I will consider here- 
after what is the teaching of the fathers on this question. I am 
now making a statement of what I consider to be the point of as- 
sault which the South is undergoing. Again, they say that the 
slave trade between the states is to be abolished ; that they have 
a right to do so under the Constitution. Now, that slave trade 
between the states is incident to its life and prosperity. Confine 
a man to one spot and say that you must make a show right 
there and nowhere else, and would that man prosper and thrive 
and be a benefit to the community and to himself ? You know 
it is not so. Trade must be allowed to seek its own mart and 
level. Otherwise you are interfering unconstitutionally and im- 
properly and pursuing a bad policy as to trade. It needs to be 
entirely unshackled. The great idea of the world at this time is 
for free trade. Now, take away the right to sell our slaves and 
you destroy the value of our property to that extent. It is so 
in regard to any property. Again, they endeavor to nullify the 
Fugitive Slave Law, and twelve states have passed laws to that 
end. They mean to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, 
and in the arsenals and dockyards." 

A voice. "Who says so?" 

Yanceij. "The abolitionists and Black Republicans say so. 
(Loud applause.) I know no distinction. Seward says so. Lin- 
coln says so. Lincoln first enunciated the irrepressible conflict. 
(Applause.) Put him in power and he will build up an aboKtion- 
ist party in every Southern state ; there is no doubt about it. 
There are men there who will take office and will come to sym- 



318 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

pathize with his views in time, and so we shall have a demoralized 
public opinion among our own people. Marshals, postmasters, 
and other federal officers will sympathize with Lincoln and this 
irrepressible conflict notion. 

"With the election of a Black Repubhcan all the South will 
he menaced. Emissaries will percolate between master and slave 
as water between the crevices of the rocks underground. They 
will be found everywhere, with strychnine to put in our wells, as 
is the case now in Texas. (Laughter, hisses, and long applause.) 
Gentlemen, there are various modes in which ideas are expressed. 
Men have tongues and they speak reason; adders have tongues 
and they hiss. (Laughter and cries of "Put the strychnine fellow 
out.") As I was saying, that in Texas it was proved beyond all 
doubt that men were taken there prowling about, some of whom 
were called levellers, upon whom were found all the means and 
appliances of exciting the slaves there to insurrection. Pistols 
and bowie knives and boxes of ammunition were found in buggies, 
and various things in different places, and such quantities of 
strychnine were found also as to excite wonder as to where in the 
world it all came from, and where on earth it could have been 
manufactured. But there those things were found, and for what 
purpose do you think? Of carrying on the irrepressible conflict 
in the underground way they have of doing these things; and 
carrying on the irrepressible conflict not in the open face of day, 
not meeting the Southern men face to face, but carrying it on in 
the darkness of the night, with the torch lighted to burn and de- 
stroy, with the springs and wells poisoned, and the slaves secretly 
incited to insurrection. At this moment we have the slave in 
insurrection in Alabama and Virginia, and in various other states. 
In many places the thing is showing itself, and it will spread, too, 
under the action of these marauding bands who are scattered over 
the country, and who are so fanatical as to think that they are doing 
a good and just thing in carrying on the irrepressible conflict be- 
tween the sentiment of freedom and the sentiment of slavery. 
So that you see that the South is in a dangerous position, and that 
the torch when applied will come in contact with a very inflam- 
mable article, and it will be a wonder if the institution be not blown 
up by the torch of the incendiary. 



DEMOCRATIC SPEECH BY WILLIAM L. YANCEY 319 

"Thus we are attacked in every relation of life by men of power 
and sense enough to do incalculable injury to us. Our property 
destroyed ; our social relations unsafe ; our slaves incited to in- 
surrection ; and our persons and property unsafe. Do you tell 
us to get rid of the cause of this state of things? No sooner do 
we get rid of it than we destroy the prosperity of the South. 

"Then comes the question, what will the South do under these 
circumstances? Will the South submit? Some men imagine 
that she will. I do not. (Applause.) But, gentlemen, suppose 
for a moment that the South will submit. Granted that the South 
does submit. Granted that she thinks that the mere form of the 
Constitution is enough for her, even while the spirit of it is fled, 
even while property is unprotected and the lives of her people un- 
safe — although her property becomes a desolation, her wealth 
wrested from her, her fields burned up, her industry destroyed; 
what will be the result ? We become hke St. Domingo or another 
Jamaica. We can expect but the same result as the English have 
experienced from her attempt to set her slaves free, and to en- 
deavor and expect to insure the same degree of prosperity with 
these slaves free as when they were slaves in bonds. The experi- 
ence of England and of all the countries on the face of the earth is 
that if you free the slaves, you can get no work from them. All 
the evidences of history show that to tamper with these slaves is 
to open a path for bloodshed, civil war, and desolation. (Ap- 
plause.) If these results follow to us, what results follow to you ? 
Desolation, also, to a great extent. The employment of your 
shipping gone to the extent of three-fourths, your warehouses 
desolated and empty to the same extent, and your merchants 
destroyed. Take away, in fact, $200,000,000 from the $300,- 
000,000, and New York will feel the effect ; so will Boston and 
Philadelphia and every manufacturing city in the country, with 
all their great interests, — all will share the desolation of the South, 
You will also feel the desolating effects of these things, though 
perhaps not to so great an extent as we of the South. 

"But it is not the destruction of property alone that is to be 
considered. That is the least of the evils we would have to de- 
plore, which will follow the march of the irrepressible conflict. 
There is the terrible war of races. It is the terrible conflict be- 



320 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

tween four million of blacks and eight million of whites. It is 
the conflict that destroys civihzation, and which will make us the 
enemies of that race until we drench our fields with the blood of 
our unfortunate people. One or the other of us must go to the 
wall. That, indeed, would be an irrepressible conflict. (Ap- 
plause.) 

"Therefore, I say that even if the South did submit to these 
things, you will share in the evils that must follow. We may be 
destroyed, but you will be less powerful, less happy, and less pros- 
perous. And thus I presume this irrepressible conflict, this great 
scheme of destruction and desolation, will affect you as well as 
us. You may master us, you may outvote us, and take away 
from us our social relations, and leave us desolate, but you your- 
selves will be in part vanquished by the very means you employ 
to vanquish us. Turn loose your hordes of a majority, your min- 
ions to trample upon the rights of property and the sacred relations 
of society ; turn them loose, but beware you do not meet the fate 
of Acteon, who was devoured by his own dogs. (Applause.) 
You have a society that needs to be actuated by loyalty to law, 
that needs to be imbued with the fundamental principles of govern- 
ment, that needs the restraints of the law to keep them observers 
of the law and obeyers of it as self-working machines. But allow 
the elements of destruction which underlie your whole social sys- 
tem to be disturbed, loose the bonds which bind them, withdraw 
the restraints which control them at present, impair in their minds 
all reverence to law and the constitutional authority, and no power 
on earth can save you from destruction. Then, I tell you that 
there would be such an upheaving of society as was never heard 
of before. It would be like the terrible bursting forth of a volcano, 
whose fiery lava would overthrow and destroy you. (Applause.) 

"But I have said that the South would not submit. I have said 
that the South would not and ought not to submit to any curtail- 
ment of her constitutional rights and equality (applause), to any 
denial of her rights in the go ye^ ment. (Continued applause.) 
It is true she is in the minority. VUnder the forms of law you could 
do as you pleased with her interests. But was the Constitution 
made for you to exercise your will at pleasure ? Was it made only 
that the majority might oppress the minority ? ("No !") What 



DEMOCRATIC SPEECH BY WILLIAM L. YANCEY 321 

was the Constitution made for but as the express assurance that 
the strong should not oppress the weak and trample them down ? 
(Applause.) The Constitution was an assurance to the man who 
had property that he would not be robbed of itjan assurance to 
the minority that the majority would in all things be governed 
by the written law and not by the higher law. (Applause.) Now, 
you at the North think that you can do without the Constitution 
in one particular. ^ So far as your relations with the South are 
concerned you do without the Constitution. Why? Because 
you have the strength and power of the government at your back. 
Because you have 183 electoral votes to 120. If you set section 
against section, you have sixty-three per cent, a majority over us. 
You have more votes than we have, and therefore you have more 
votes than we have in the Senate. You have more votes than we 
have, and therefore you have a majority over us in the House. 
Having more votes than we have, you can elect the President, 
you can reform the legislature and the judiciary. You have power 
in all the branches of the government to pass such laws as you like. 
If you are actuated by passion or prejudice or by the desire of self- 
aggrandizement, it is within your power as far as physical power 
goes to outnumber us and commit aggression upon us, and there- 
fore I say you can do without the ConstitutionVN Then with a 
majority in every part of the government, what have we to look 
to for protection? Not to numbers; there we are weak. 

''But have we not rights, or have we no rights but such as are 
subject to your will, but such as you may chance to give us? If 
so, then I say that this is a most despotic and tyrannical govern- 
ment of ours, a despotism of the millions ; and for my part I would 
deem it better and prefer to Hve under the despotism of an enlight- 
ened king than under the despotism of the millions. (Applause.) 

"Then the South has but one thing to look to for protection; 
that is the Constitution. (Applause.) The Constitution was made 
for her protection. The Constitution was a compact entered into 
on the understanding that the majority should legislate and govern 
according to certain laid-down laws, by the laws as received from 
the hands of Washington and the other patriots of the Revolution, 
by laws specified in the Constitution. (Applause.) Will the South 
permit you to trench upon the Constitution as given to the country 



322 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

•by the patriot fathers, the Constitution which is to-day as it was 
then ? Your fathers then agreed to allow that our fathers should, 
in all time to come, be governed by the provisions of the Constitu- 
tion. You may alter it, you may change it, because you have 
a superior physical force to us ; but there is a certain feehng within 
the breast of every Southern man ; that feeling is loyalty to the 
fundamental institutions of the land ; loyalty is the pride of the 
Southern heart ; to this very hour and to that loyalty and these 
fundamental principles of government and the Constitution she 
now appeals. (Applause.) Mind you, the South asks for nothing 
that is not her right. She claims nothing from you that is not her 
due. She stands upon the platform of the Constitution where you 
stand, your peer, your equal. (Applause.) 

"Whenever you propose by a system of hocus-pocus legislation 
indirectly to undermine or get rid of the Constitution, or to carry 
it out according to the mere will of the majority, the South will 
hold up that instrument to you and say to you by this you must 
be guided, and will further say to you, that as long as you are 
loyal defenders and observers of the Constitution, you are our 
brethren. But attempt to set it aside, to trample it under your 
feet, then I tell you that by that first act of aggression, of invasion 
upon our rights, we are free and independent. (Applause.) 
Gentlemen, God has given that instinct to the poor worm that when 
it is trodden upon it will turn upon the foot that tramples it. We, 
thank God, are men, sentient, intelligent men, who know our rights 
and who dare to maintain them. (Applause.) In the advocacy 
of our rights we do not assail, nor do we in any way trench upon, 
your rights. In our advocacy of our rights we simply ask of you, 
gentlemen, to curb your will, restrain that passionate desire for 
the advancement of power, let not a mere feeling of pride create 
and force an enmity against us. Rise to the high elevation of 
good and wise men, who would do unto others as they would have 
others do unto them. (Applause.) 

"I have been asked here to-night certain questions, which I 
deem it right to answer now, at the present. One of the questions 
is, 'Would you consider the election of Abraham Lincoln as Presi- 
dent a sufficient cause to warrant the South in seceding from the 
Union?' The second is, 'Whether, in the case of Mr. Lincoln 



DEMOCRATIC SPEECH BY WILLIAM L. YANCEY 323 

being elected, and any of the states attempted to secede, you would 
support the general government and the other states in maintain- 
ing the integrity of the Union ? ' The first question is a specula- 
tion, a political speculation at that. It has nothing to do with the 
canvass. I am here, however, aiding you to prevent such a calam- 
ity. I am honestly endeavoring to maintain the integrity of the 
government and the safety of the Union at the ballot box. (Ap- 
plause.) I am here to aid you in trying to prevent the election 
of Abraham Lincoln, the author of the irrepressible conflict ; and 
if others as faithfully do their duty, he will never be elected. 
(Applause.) I am asked, and have been asked before, whether 
I consider that the election would be a just cause for the secession 
of the Southern states. That is a matter to come after the ballot 
box. (Cheers and derisive laughter, and cries, "Answer the ques- 
tion.^') Be quiet, gentlemen. Hear me, hear me. (Great ex- 
citement and tumult and cries of "Order, order," from the platform.) 
Don't be impatient, gentlemen. (Increasing disorder.) Don't 
be impatient, and above all things keep your temper. (Laughter 
and applause.) This is not the time to fight, certainly. (Laughter.) 
This is the time to vote and to consider how to vote." 
A voice. "Let us have an answer to the question." 
Yancey. "You are impatient, my friend. What is the matter 
with you?" 

Excited man on the platform. "Put him out." 
Yancey. "If the gentlemen are so desirous of knowing my 
opinions, they ought to abide by my decisions when uttered. 
(Cheers.) This thing of asking advice of a man, and then not 
taking his advice, is a monstrous poor way of getting along. 
Now, I am going to say this about it. This question that is put 
to me is a speculation as to the future. It is what I consider in 
the event of something else happening. I hope to God that that 
will never happen, and that the speculation will never come to 
a head. (Applause.) I am no candidate for the presidency, 
my friends who wrote these questions, though some of you seem 
to have thought so, judging from the manner in which you have 
treated me and Mr. Breckenridge. I am no candidate for ofiice, 
and I don't want your vote. But I would like to advise with you 
and get you to vote for a good man — for any man, I do not care 



324 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

who it is, excepting one of the irrepressible conflict men. {Great 
applause.) In the first place, there is no such thing as the South 
seceding. I do not know how you would go about it. {"Good'' 
and cheers.) There is such a thing as a state seceding ; but the 
South seceding is a thing that I cannot comprehend. I do not 
know how the South would go about it. I do not think that it 
would ever happen ; and, therefore, I have no answer as to what 
the South should do. 

"Now, then, I am a citizen of Alabama. I am what is called a 
states' rights man. {Cheers.) I beheve in the rights of my state. 
The Constitution of my country tells me that certain powers were 
given to the general government, and that those which were not 
expressly given or were not necessary to carry out the powers 
granted, were reserved to the states and to the people of the states. 
My state has reserved powers and reserved rights, and I believe 
in the right of secession. {"Good.") Virginia and New York 
were parties to that contract. When the question was presented, 
the state of Virginia expressed her willingness to join under the 
compact. The state of New York also did so through her con- 
vention. It was provided that if nine states assented, it would 
be a government for these nine and for all the states that would 
sign the compact. Therefore the compact was a compact between 
the states mutually assenting. If any dissented, there was no 
proposition to force them into the Union. Therefore, I believe 
in the right of a state to go out of the Union, if she thinks proper. 
The state of Alabama in her last General Assembly passed a law 
requiring the governor in the event of a Black Republican being 
elected President of the United States, to convene, within so many 
days after he ascertained that fact, a convention of the people of 
the state, for the purpose of considering the question which is 
here presented to me. It is a question for the decision of my state ; 
I cannot decide it. As one of the citizens of Alabama, I shall abide 
by the decision of my state. If she goes out, I go with her. If 
she remains in, I remain with her. I could not do otherwise. 
{Laughter and applause.) 

"It is a grave question for any citizen to consider whether he 
will dissolve, or aid in dissolving, the bonds which connect his 
state with the government. It is a grave question, but one which 



DEMOCRATIC SPEECH BY WILLIAM L. YANCEY 325 

I hope God in his providence will keep me from considering by 
the safety of this government in the election of some man opposed 
to this irrepressible conflict party. (Cheers.) But when the 
time comes for me to make up my mind, I will have deliberate 
consultation with my fellow-citizens in Alabama. You in New 
York have nothing to do with it ; nothing. Whatever delibera- 
tions you choose to have, as citizens of New York, on the fate of 
your state, will be for yourselves. I have no interest in the ques- 
tion except incidentally, and have no right to advise with you or 
to say anything to you about it. But upon this presidential ques- 
tion I have a common interest with you, because it is the election 
of one to administer the government for the next four years for 
my state as well as for yours. Therefore it is a common question 
about which I can consult with you. But whether my state or 
any other state shall go out of the Union is a question which it 
will be for that state to determine. It is not to be determined 
by arguing it before election. It would be a grave matter for me 
to commit myself here, to a crowd in New York, to any policy 
that might be influenced by after events, by surrounding circum- 
stances, by the expressed sympathies of large majorities of the 
people of New York or other states with the South. For me here, 
merely to gratify some personal antagonist, to express any opinion 
on that point would be folly ; it is the wildest folly to expect that 
I will. That opinion will be rendered to my state whenever they 
ask for it. {"Three cheers for the answer.") ^ 

"Now, I am asked one other question. I am asked, whether 
if any portion of the South secedes, I will aid the government in 
maintaining the integrity of the Union. Yes, my friends, the in- 
tegrity of the Union. (Cheers.) I am now struggling for it and 
shall struggle for it to the day of election. The integrity of the 
Union I shall struggle for with my life's blood, if required. (En- 
thusiastic cheers.) But if this questioner meant by the integrity of 
the Union the preservation of any administration that shall tram- 
ple on any portion of the rights of the South, I tell him that I will 
aid my state in resisting it to blood. (Great cheering.) The com- 
mon rights of resistance to wrong that belong to the worm, those 

1 For his answer in Baltimore, see p. 215 ; see Breckenridge's answer, 
pp. 174-175, and Douglas', pp. 180-181. 



326 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

rights are not the rights that were meant to be secured by our 
fathers in the Declaration of Independence, when they cut them- 
selves loose from the despotism and the despotic ties of the old 
world. The serf of Russia has got the right of revolution. The 
hog has got the right to resist if you try to put a knife to his throat. 
{Cheers and laughter.) The right of revolution is the poor serf's 
right. It is no right at all. It is only the last expiring throw 
of oppressed nationality. (Tumultuous cheering.) Yes, gentle- 
men, there is the poor degraded people that for centuries have 
groaned under the armed head of a powerful despotism, that knows 
no rights in the masses save the privilege of rendering up their 
hard-earned earnings in order that the masters might revel in 
infamous and criminal luxury and wealth. Poor Italy is trying 
to raise up her bleeding and bruised body, and is now perchance 
on one knee, and with manacled hands is yet struggling for the 
great right of revolution. (Cheers.) 

''Have our fathers provided no better fate for us? Yes, they 
have. They have made this a government existing on the will of 
sovereign states, a compact between sovereign states, not made 
states by force, not made consolidated masses by the conquering 
march of a hero, with his army at his back and his sword thrown 
into the scale, where the will of the conquered is not considered. 
That is not our form of government. Ours is a form of govern- 
ment that the people have willed. It is self-government. It is 
government where states have willed to make a compact with each 
other ; and whenever that compact is violated, who is there higher 
than the states? Who is there more sovereign than the parties 
to the compact who have the reserved rights guaranteed to them ? 
There are rights reserved to these states ; the Constitution itself 
guarantees them; and there is the great right that rises above 
revolution — because it is the right of humanity, the right of civih- 
zation, the right of an intelligent public opinion, the right of free- 
men — and that is, that when governments become oppressive 
and subversive of the objects for which they were formed, then, 
in the language of our fathers, the}^ have the right to form a new 
government. (Cheers.) 

"Governments should not be changed for light and transient 
causes, but whenever the whole property of an entire community 



DEMOCRATIC SPEECH BY WILLIAM L. YANCEY 327 

is swept away by a policy that undermines it or deals it a death- 
blow directly ; when the social relations of an enlightened, virtuous 
and Christian people shall be utterly destroyed by a policy that 
invidiously undermines them, and produces inevitably a contest 
between castes and races ; when these rights are touched upon and 
the people see that the attack is coming, they will not wait until 
the poUcy is clinched upon them. The very moment their equality 
is destroyed in the government under the Constitution, then, in 
my opinion, it becomes the duty of the state to protect its people 
by interposing its reserved rights between the acts of the general 
government and its people. And when it does that, if Abraham 
Lincoln or any other man who aids Abraham Lincoln or any 
other man in the presidential office shall undertake to use Federal 
bayonets to coerce free and sovereign states in this Union (I an- 
swer that question as an individual because it does not involve 
my state) , I shall fly to the standard of that state and give it the 
best assistance in my power. {Great cheers.) 

"But consider for a moment where we would be. Suppose 
Georgia should determine to secede in the event of the refusal to 
admit a slave state into the Union. Georgia has deliberately 
resolved by her ordinance in convention — and it is a fact of her 
constitution and irrepealable, save as the constitution is repealable 
— that in the event of the refusal to admit a state into the Union 
because it is a slave state (and that is a part of the irrepressible 
pohcy), it shall be the duty of her government to call a convention 
of her people together, and it is made their duty to go out of the 
Union. That is the law of Georgia and she will resist to the ut- 
most, and sever the last tie that binds her to the Union. Now, 
suppose Georgia does that, that she goes out of the Union. She 
does not hurt you. She does not trespass upon your rights. She 
takes nothing with her that belongs to you. She takes nothing 
but what belongs to her. She merely withdraws from the govern- 
ment. Suppose that the Federal army was told to march against 
her, and the navy told to blockade her ports, and suppose that 
Georgia should be conquered by these eighteen miUion; is she, 
then, a free and sovereign state in the Union ? The Constitution 
says that she is. But will she be so? She will be a conquered 
province of the Union. Would the Union then be a Union of the 



328 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

states, a Union under the Constitution, a Union of states free and 
equal, based on the mutual assent of the people ? No ; it would 
be a military despotism. The very moment such a thing occurred, 
the whole character of the government would be revolutionized, 
and the Cabinet itself would do what Georgia had not done by 
withdrawing. Georgia, by withdrawing, leaves you free and 
sovereign and independent states in the Union, and she herself 
free and sovereign and independent out of it. But to force that 
state into submission, to keep her a conquered province, dissolves 
your constitutional government, provides for a standing army 
and entails the evils that follow in the train of a standing army.'^ 
"But, gentlemen, this is the time, this is the place, this is almost 
the hour for you to decide — what ? That your Constitution and 
your government shall not be put to such desperate straits. This 
is the day and the hour almost for you to decide that, as men, 
you will not bring about a course of events where you will have 
to protect your Union by bayonets, but that you will, as wise men, 
protect it at the ballot box. That is the genius of the country. 
And how are you to do it? Vote for some party or for some 
candidate that acknowledges that the Southern states are equal 
in this Confederacy ; that they are entitled at least to protection 
in this Confederacy ; that they shall not be trampled upon ; that 
no rights shall be torn from them ; that they shall have equal 
rights in forming new states and in the admission of new states ; 
that they shall have free and equal chance given to their industry 
and civilization ; that the civilization and industry of the North 
shall march side by side with the civilization and industry of the 
South, in a generous, noble, enlightened spirit of emulation ; and 
that the bayonet shall not be thrown into the scale of the North, 
as the sword of Brennus was when the fate of Rome hung in the 
scale. (Applause.) Give us a fair showing. It is all we ask. 
Give us an equal chance with you. It is all we ask. Trammel not 
our civihzation and industry with your schemes of emancipation, 
your schemes of abolition, your schemes to encourage raids upon 
us. Give us the showing we give you. Hands off ! Meet us in 
generous rivalry, and he who conquers in the strife is a conqueror 

* For Douglas' answer, see pp. 180-182. 



DEMOCRATIC SPEECH BY WILLIAM L. YANCEY 329 

indeed, because the victory will be given to him as the just meed of 
superior sagacity, superior intelligence, and superior virtue ; and 
whenever you get to be superior to the South in these things, 
gentlemen, we will bow in reverence before you. (Applause.) 
"And now, my friends, let me close. ("Go on.") The events 
of yesterday press heavily upon me. I acknowledge that I have 
no exultation.^ I feel none. I can feel none. I feel that the Con- 
stitution is weighed down beneath these heavy majorities. I feel, 
gentlemen, that the hour progresses in which these tests must be 
apphed, which tests may be attended with the rending of the ties 
that bind us, in the dissolution of the government that has made 
us happy and prosperous, and in the destruction of that general 
prosperity which is the admiration of the civilized and Christian 
world. I feel it, gentlemen. The keystone of the arch of the 
Union is already crumbling, and the great fabric rests upon the 
shoulders of New York. (Cheers.) In the hands of New York 
is the decision of the question. A more weighty question was never 
before you. One freighted with the fate of societies and of national- 
ities is on your mind. Peace, prosperity. Union, the Constitution, 
the blessings of Christian hberty, may depend upon the vote of 
New York. That vote may crush all these things. That vote 
may perpetuate these blessings. That you may be equal, gentle- 
men, to the great responsibilities of this occasion, is the prayer 
of him who addresses you, and who now bids you respectfully 
farewell." (Great cheering.) 

1 Pennsylvania goes Republican in a state election. 



APPENDIX E 

CONSTITUTIONAL UNION SPEECH, BY W. G. BROWN- 
LOW, KNOXVILLE, TENNESSEE, OCTOBER, 1861 ^ 

" Gentlemen of the Bell and Everett Club, and Fellow- 
citizens: The Bible tells, in reference to a high and holy theme, 
that 'day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth 
knowledge.' This is emphatically true in regard to the presidential 
election. The developments of every day and night add strength to 
the conviction that the presidential contest has narrowed down to 
a choice between John Bell and Abraham Lincoln. Breckenridge 
has been distanced at the start ; he let down the first heat ; and it 
is the very madness of folly to talk about electing him. The lead- 
ers of the Democratic party, who procured his nomination by a 
rebellious faction at Baltimore, took th?,t method of accomplishing 
a long-cherished object, the dissolution of this Union and the 
'precipitating of the cotton states into a revolution.' 

"Douglas, too, is out of the question, really not in the race. 
He may carry a few of the Northern states, and, I think, will do 
so ; but his election is impossible. His friends desire the defeat 
of Lincoln, first, because he is a sectional candidate, as they say, 
running upon the nigger issue alone ; and next, because he holds 
the position of a candidate for the presidency by virtue of the prom- 
inence given to him by Buchanan, Breckenridge, and the other 
members of the cabinet, who ran him against Douglas for the 
United States Senate, and brought the whole patronage of the 
government to bear in his favor. Intelligent Douglas men see 
that Bell is the only man who can now defeat Lincoln. They 
see that Bell will carry nearly all the Southern states, if the Breck- 

1 Sketches of the Rise, Progress, and Decline of Secession, by W. G. 
Browulow, Philadelphia and Cincinnati, 1862, p. 191. 

330 



CONSTITUTIONAL UNION SPEECH 331 

enridge party are not bent upon the dissolution of the Union, and 
their conservatism and devotion to the Union will finally lead them 
to the support of Bell. 

"With these preliminary remarks I will proceed to address you 
on the subject, not of Mr. Bell's record, but of the record of 
Breckenridge and Lane, and of the merits of the party putting them 
forth as candidates. 

''I charge, first of all, that Buchanan's is the most corrupt 
and profligate administration ever known to this government 
since its organization; nay, that ours is the most corrupt 
government in the civilized world, and that this corruption 
and profligacy have grown up under Democratic rule ; for, with 
the exception of four years under Taylor and Fillmore, the 
Democrats have had the control of the government for the 
last twenty-four years. 

''In 1856, when out 'of power, Buchanan denounced the ex- 
penditures of $40,000,000 under Fillmore as an outrage, in an 
electioneering letter he put forth, and said that an honest 
people ought not to submit to it. In power, when clothed with 
authority to correct these abuses, he expended double the 
amount ; for in one year after he was inaugurated, he increased 
the public expenditures to $80,000,000. Here was economy with 
a vengeance ! Nay, he found a surplus of $20,000,000 in the 
treasury, but has borrowed until the outstanding debt is the rise 
of $100,000,000. 

''But, it may be inquired, what has all this to do with voting 
for or against Breckenridge and Lane ? Much, every way. Breck- 
enridge is the tail end of this miserable administration, has been 
connected with its cabinet councils from the beginning, and is now 
its pet candidate for the presidency. Old Joe Lane has stood 
upon the floor of the Senate for the last three years and defended 
its villainous measures, however monstrous they have been. 
Both of these men, if elected, will seek to hide its revolting de- 
formities, if, indeed, they do not carry out the same lying and 
thieving policy. We need a change. I am sick of seeing it paraded 
in foreign journals that the President of the United States is a 
thief and a liar. Mr, Buchanan has been convicted of lying and 
hiding for thieves, as well as of advising them to steal from the 



332 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

government, by the sworn testimony of various men of his own 
party before the Covode Committee. 

"As a general thing, the Breckenridge speakers pass all this 
over as unworthy of notice. Whilthom, the state elector, does 
meet it, it is true, by charging that John Bell and Judge Douglas 
voted for the appropriations, and thereby placed money within 
the reach of Buchanan and his dishonest officeholders. This is 
a defense with a vengeance. 

"But it will be said that these are mere assertions. Let us, 
then, have the proof. Here it is; and it is high Democratic 
authority and will not be called in question. 

" ' When I first entered Congress, in 1843, the expenses of the 
government were only thirty million per annum. The country 
had gone through the expensive Mexican War, with sixty-three 
thousand soldiers in the field, for thirty millions, and now, in the 
time of peace, the estimates are seventy-three millions ! He 
believed forty millions an abundance for the national expense.' 
— Hon. a. H. Stephens. 

"'This government, sixty-nine years of age, scarcely out of its 
swaddling clothes, is making more corrupt use of money in pro- 
portion to the amount collected from the people, as I honestly 
believe, than any other government on the habitable globe.' — Hon. 
Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee. 

"'I think it is not saying too much to declare that this country 
has gone faster and further in ten years, in extravagance, than 
most other countries have gone in centuries.' — General Shields. 

"'Before God, I believe this to be the most corrupt government 
on earth.' — Senator Toombs. 

"'From the byways and highways of the government the rot- 
tenness of corruption sends forth an insufferable stench. Why 
are the people so patient ? Why slumbers the indignation of the 
Democracy ? ' — Roger A. Pryor.^ 

"But, gentlemen, I object to Breckenridge on account of his 
antislavery record ; and, as a Southern man, I would not vote 
for him even if John Bell were not a candidate, and the race were 
between him and Lincoln ! I, therefore, ask of you the privilege 
of exhibiting this record. 

1 See pp. 132-141 for further treatment of the corruption of Buchanan. 



t 



CONSTITUTIONAL UNION SPEECH 333 



Breckenridge on Intervention 

"'The whole theory of Congressional intervention is a Ubel on 
our institutions.' — The Congressional Globe, Vol. XXIX, p. 442. 

"John C. Breckenridge is the nominee of a party claiming Con- 
gressional protection. 

Breckenridge's Idea of the Effect on the Country of the 
Passage of the Kansas Bill 

"'No, sir, if we reject this bill, we open up the waters of bitter- 
ness, which will be sealed again in time, but not until these agita- 
tors shall have rioted awhile in the confusions of the country. We 
blow high the flames to furnish habitations for these political 
salamanders who can exist only in the fires of domestic strife. 
But if it passes, the question will be forever removed from the 
Halls of Congress, and deposited with the people, who can settle 
it in a manner answerable to their own views of interest and 
happiness.' — The Congressional Globe, Vol. XXIX. 

Breckenridge's Idea of the Object of the Kansas Bill 

'"Then, sir, neither the purpose nor the effect of the bill is to 
legislate slavery into Nebraska and Kansas ; but -its effect is 
to sweep away this vestige of Congressional dictation on this sub- 
ject, to allow the free citizens of this Union to enter the common 
territory with the Constitution and the bill alone in their hands, 
and to remit the decision of their rights under both to the courts 
of the country.' — The Congressional Globe, Vol. XXIX. 

Breckenridge on Slavery in Kansas 

'"Among the many misrepresentations of the Kansas-Nebraska 
Bill perhaps none is more flagrant than the charge that it proposes 
to legislate slavery into Kansas and Nebraska. Sir, if the bill 
contained such a feature, it could not receive my vote. The right 
to establish involves the right to prohibit; and, denying both, 
I would vote for neither.' — The Congressional Globe. 



334 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 



J. C. Breckenridge on the Kansas Bill 

"'Did not the non-slaveholding states (generally) insist that 
the true policy was the prohibition of slavery in the territories 
of the Union by act of Congress, and, by consequence, insist upon 
applying this principle to Utah and New Mexico? Did not the 
slaveholding states, on the contrary, planting themselves on the 
ground of Federal non-intervention, resist this policy, and, by 
consequence, its adoption and application to those territories? 
And, after a long and fearful struggle, did not the latter doctrine 
prevail? and was it not carried into law in the Utah and New 
Mexico acts? Did not the pubUc, the press, conventions, and 
states hail the result as a final settlement, in principle and sub- 
stance of the subject of slavery?' — The Congressional Globe, Vol. 
XXIX, p. 441. 

"If this is not sufficient to estabhsh the antislavery proclivities 
of Breckenridge, I will add a few brief extracts from his celebrated 
Tippecanoe speech in 1856, delivered before ten thousand Free- 
soilers, whose votes he solicited for himself and Buchanan. 

"'I am connected with no party that has for its object the ex- 
tension of slavery, nor with any to prevent the people of a state 
or territory from deciding the question of its existence with them 
for themselves.' 

"'I happened to be in Congress when the Nebraska bill passed, 
and gave it my voice and vote, and because it did what it did, 
viz. : it acknowledged the right of the people of the territory to 
settle the question for themselves, and not because I supposed, 
what I do not now beheve, that it legislated slavery into the terri- 
tory. The Democratic party is not a proslavery party.' 

"Now, the Southern wing of the Democratic party indignantly 
rejected Douglas, seceded at Baltimore, and nominated Brecken- 
ridge, because Douglas held the very doctrines herein avowed 
by Breckenridge ! That you may see them in a still more ridicu- 
lous light, here is the resolution adopted by the Douglas Demo- 
cratic state convention of Illinois, declaring : ' Slavery, if it exists 
in a territory, does not derive its validity from the Constitution 



\ 



CONSTITUTIONAL UNION SPEECH 335 

of the United States, but is a mere municipal institution, existing 
in such territory under the laws thereof.' 

"In 1850, while Breckenridge was a member of the Kentucky 
legislature, he declared, by resolution : — 

'^^ Resolved, By the General Assembly of the Commonwealth 
of Kentucky, that the question of slavery in the territories, being 
wholly local and domestic, belongs to the people who inhabit 
them.' 

"Will some one of the Breckenridge speakers traveling through 
this country, quoting garbled extracts from Bell's record, and 
misrepresenting that able and experienced statesman's legislative 
course, show a shade of difference in the squatter sovereignty 
principles set forth in these two resolutions ? They both declared 
slavery in the territories to be local, and only subject to the laws 
thereof. 

"But 'Old Joe Lane,' as he is familiarly called, holds the same 
doctrine, and said in one of his speeches : — 

"'The question of slavery is a most perplexing one, and ought 
not to be agitated. We should leave it with the states where it 
constitutionally rests, and to the people of the territories, to pro- 
hibit or establish, as to them may seem right and proper.' 

"Here, then, are two rank and straight-out squatters, who have 
outsquatted Douglas, taken up by these Baltimore disunionists 
and seceders and run for the presidency and vice presidency, and 
Douglas unceremoniously thrust aside because he was a squatter.^ 

"Will some Breckenridge orator explain why it was that Doug- 
las was set aside for heresy, and two other gentlemen selected, 
holding the same heresy and hugging it closer ? The answer will 
be, 'Because we wanted our rights under the Constitution.' 
What rights? The right to secede from the Union and to form 
a Southern Confederacy. Of this right and this unholy purpose 
I shall have something to say before I close. 

"I inquire again, why was Douglas rejected and Breckenridge 

1 For Douglas' treatment of the popular sovereignty record of the 
Breckenxidgeites, see pp. 95-96. 



336 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

selected by the intense Southern wing of the party ? I have the 
true answer to this question, given on the floor of the Senate on the 
24th of last May by a distinguished politician. I want you to 
hear it, and when you hear it ask me who he was : — 

"'It is the fault of the Democratic party, in dodging truth, 
in dodging the Constitution itself, that has brought the trouble 
upon the country and the party that is experienced to-day.' 

"Who said that last May on the floor of the Senate, and is 
thus reported in the Congressional Globe f It was 'Old Joe Lane' ; 
and I am glad that he said it, in Heu of some opposition man; 
for the latter would have been charged with abusing the Demo- 
cratic party ! 

"Well might Herschel V. Johnson of Georgia exclaim in a public 
speech at Macon but the other day : — 

'"This whole secession movement is without justification. It 
is not dignified by devotion to principle. It is scarcely redeemed 
from the odiousness of faction. Its highest attribute is that of 
sheer, naked, and ungenerous warfare against a great and dis- 
tinguished Democrat. Let its authors bear the responsibility 
and reap the coming retribution. It will come when the popular 
mind shall be awakened to its legitimate tendencies.' 

"But I come now to the subject of disunion. This is a sore 
subject with the Breckenridge party, and they are the more sen- 
sitive when it is named and prone to denunciation when it is 
charged, because they know and feel that they are justly liable to 
the charge. The Breckenridge men are not all disunionists, but 
the unsophisticated disunionists are Breckinridge men. The 
states that seceded from the regular Democratic convention had 
expressed themselves as favorable to disunion before the national 
convention met even at Charleston. In the debates at Charleston 
and Baltimore they showed that that was their cherished project. 

"Many of the leading men who supported Breckenridge, in 
different states, openly avow that they are in favor of disunion 
in the event of the election of Lincoln, though he might be legally 
and constitutionally elected, and by a majority of the American 
voters. Here are a few of their names : — 



CONSTITUTIONAL UNION SPEECH 337 

Hon. Jefferson Davis of Missis- Hon. L. P. Walker of Alabama 

sippi Hon. Sydenham Moore of Ala- 
Hon. L. M. Keitt of South Caro- bama 

lina Hon. Mr. Pugh of Alabama 

Hon. Mr. Curry of Alabama Hon. D. Hubbard of Alabama 

Hon. J. T. Morgan of Alabama Hon. Mr. Gartrell of Georgia 

Hon. J. L. Orr of South Carohna Hon. Mr. Crawford of Georgia 

Hon. R.B.Rhett of South Caro- Hon. Mr. Bonham of South 

lina Carolina 

Hon. Wm. L. Yancey of Ala- Hon. Mr. Singleton of Missis- 

bama sippi 

Gov. J. J. Pettus of Mississippi Hon. R. Davis of Mississippi 

Ex-Governor McRae of Missis- Hon. R. A. Pryor of Virginia 

sippi Hon. H. S. Bennett of Missis- 
Governor Perry of Florida sippi 

Ex-Governor McWillie of Mis- Governor Gist of South Carolina 

sissippi Hon. Mr. Boyce of South Caro- 
Mr. Dejarnette of Virginia lina 

Hon. A. Burt of South Carolina 

''Now, hear what two of these ardent Breckenridge men have 
said. It will be remembered that Hon. Barnwell Rhett said, 
'The Richmond convention is not national; a national conven- 
tion is one based on principles common to all portions of the United 
States.' The Hon. A. Burt said: 'I have not an element of a 
national Democrat in me. I was raised a nullifier, and should be 
recreant to principle if I were to apostatize and find myself in the 
ranks of the national democracy.' 

"Yancey's scheme for 'precipitating' the cotton states into a 
revolution you are all familiar with. 

"Major Polk, Douglas elector for the state at large, in speaking 
with Haynes and Peyton, at Fayetteville, August 31, stated that 
he was prepared to prove by a telegraphic dispatch that Brecken- 
ridge and Lane were nominated by the Richmond seceding con- 
vention one hour before they were at Baltimore ! This plot ex- 
plains why the letter of the Richmond seceding convention, notif}^- 
ing Breckenridge of his nomination, was never published, though 
his letter of acceptance was. 



338 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

" The St. Louis Republican, good democratic authority, posi- 
tively asserts, 'The rupture at Charleston and Baltimore is seen 
to have been a preconcerted part of the disunion program, con- 
cocted in the secret lodges of the disunion leagues ; that the plot 
was deliberately hatched there for the disruption of the only na- 
tional party organization, as an essential preliminary to 'precipi- 
tating the cotton states into a revolution,' and that by a division 
of the Democrats of the North, and consequent election of Lincoln, 
the disunionists hoped to "fire the Southern heart" to the work 
of overthrowing the Constitution and the Union.' 

"A recent issue of the Huntsville Democrat, a Breckenridge 
organ, edited by a brother of Senator Clay, says : — 

'"If we wait till our enemies get control of the power of the 
Federal government, as they now have of the Northern state 
governments, and have possession of the purse and the sword, the 
treasury, army and navy, then we white men of the South, who 
wield the power of slavery, will be in the course of ultimate extinc- 
tion. The war of extermination, as Douglas called the irrepress- 
ible conflict, predicted by Lincoln — already declared — will 
then have been waged.' 

"Hon. EH S. Shorter, Breckenridge elector in Alabama, re- 
cently said in a speech in Pike County, which speech is reported 
in the States Rights Advocate: — 

'"He took the position boldly, that upon the election of a Black 
Republican, upon a sectional platform and by a sectional vote, 
he was for a dissolution of the Union.' 

"The Columbia South Carolinian, a Breckenridge organ of 
recent date, says : — 

"'The Republicans will push forward in their work and elect 
their President, and, when too late to reflect or retreat, ^all find 
themselves face to face with an indignant and outraged people, 
with the flag of revolution unfurled.' 

"The Columbus Times, Columbus, Georgia, a Breckenridge- 
Yancey paper, thus unfurls the flag of disunion : — 

"'We have not postponed the issue indefinitely. We are not 



CONSTITUTIONAL UNION SPEECH 339 

going to wait for an overt act of aggression before resisting a Black 
Republican President. We repeat, there is no issue of dissolution 
in the platform of any party now before the country. We repeat 
that when Lincoln is declared elected we shall appeal to the 
"people to redress their grievance." We repeat all that we have 
ever said that means resistance to Black Republican rule, from 
first to last.' 

"Hon. John Driver, of Russell County, Alabama, an ardent 
Breckenridge man, and a member of the Charleston and Balti- 
more conventions, says in a published card over his signature, 
July 23, 1860, in defense of a dissolution of the Union : ' To effect 
this object, we, the disunion party, disrupted the Democratic 
convention at Charleston, and at Baltimore induced others to 
join us by our agreeing to support men not entirely of our senti- 
ments.' 

"James D. Thomas, the Breckenridge elector for the Knox 
district, said at Maynardsville, on the 28th ultimo, that if the 
judiciary, legislative, and executive departments refuse protection 
to slave property, he and his party were for secession. He said 
that thing, and I presume he represents his party in Tennessee. 
Governor Harris is committed to the same odious and revolution- 
ary doctrine. So are all the disunion leaders in this state. 

"The Bell and Everett elector in the state of Georgia, Colonel 
S. C. Elam, has renounced the Union ticket and come out in a 
card for Breckenridge; Colonel Elam gives his reasons for the 
change; and I beg you to hear those reasons. 

"He says that Breckenridge and Lane stand even a slimmer 
chance than Bell and Everett. Then why does Colonel Elam 
leave us? He says that his 'controlling reason' is that 'the 
Breckenridge party is pledged to dissolve the Union if Lincoln is 
elected,' and that ' Breckenridge's running renders Lincoln's elec- 
tion certain.' He thinks that ' Douglas might be elected if Breck- 
enridge was out of the way,' but 'Breckenridge couldn't beat 
Lincoln if Douglas was out of the way.' 

"So here is the whole game of the Yanceyites. Colonel Elam 
has let the disunion cat out of the bag. The Breckenridge party 
is pledged to dissolve the Union in a certain contingency, the elec- 



340 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

tion of Lincoln. To make that contingency certain, they are 
running Breckenridge.^ 

"Mr. Bell owns eighty-three slaves in his own right, and his 
wife owns just an equal number, making in all one hundred and 
sixty-six, and still he is sneeringly pointed at as unsound on the 
slavery question ! Mr. Douglas owns no slaves, and never did 
in his own right, and is a Northern man ; and he has an electoral 
ticket in almost all of the Southern states. Mr. Breckenridge 
and family live in Lexington, and board at the Phoenix Hotel, 
and he votes in that city, regarding it as his home. For several 
years past he has returned no property for taxation, either real 
or personal, as appears from the tax book, and for the best reason 
in the world — he has none. He has a free colored woman as a 
nurse, and this is all the connection he has with slavery ; and yet 
he is the proslavery candidate for the presidency, and is supported 
by the slave code, slave trade, chsunion party, as the only man 
prepared to do justice to the South upon the question of the 
everlasting nigger ! 

"Now, gentlemen and members of the club, I am about through 
with the remarks I intended to submit to you on this occasion. 
Candor requires me, as the contest is rapidly drawing to a close, 
to admit that the chances are that Mr. Lincoln will be elected. 
If so, the entire Breckenridge party in the South will go in for 
a Southern Confederacy. If I am living, — and I hope I may 
be, — I shall stand by the Union as long as there are five states 
that adhere to it. I will say more ; I will go out of the Confederacy 
if the rebellious party sustains itself. Nay, I wall say still more ; 
I will sustain Lincoln if he will go to work to put dowTi the great 
Southern mob that leads off in such a rebeUion ! 

"These are my sentiments, and these are my purposes; and 
I am no abohtionist, but a Southern man. I expect to stand by 
this Union, and battle to sustain it, though Whiggery and Democ- 
racy, Slavery and Abolitionism, Southern rights and Northern 
wrongs, are all blown to the devil ! I will never join in the outcry 
against the American Union in order to build up a corrupt Demo- 
cratic party in the South, and to create offices in a new govern- 

» See pp. 175-178 for further treatment of the secession proclivities 
of the Breckenridgeites. 



CONSTITUTIONAL UNION SPEECH 341 

ment for an unprincipled pack of broken-down politicians, who 
have justly rendered themselves odious by stealing the public 
money. I may stand alone in the South ; but I believe thousands 
and tens of thousands will stand by me, and, if need be, perish 
with me in the same cause. 

'*I will conclude, fellow-citizens, by reading the following 
document, which ought to be published once a year in every 
newspaper in America, and read out as often from every pulpit 
in the land, that the real people may see who signed it, and what 
they pledged themselves to stand by : — 

"'The undersigned, members of the thirty-first Congress of 
the United States, believing that a renewal of sectional contro- 
versy upon the subject of slavery would be both dangerous to the 
Union and destructive of its objects, and seeing no mode by which 
such controversy can be avoided except by a strict adherence to 
the settlement thereof effected by the Compromise acts passed at 
the last session of Congress, do hereby declare their intention to 
maintain the said settlement inviolate, and to resist all attempts 
to repeal or alter the acts aforesaid, unless by the general consent 
of the friends of the measure, and to remedy such evils, if any, 
as time and experience may develop. 

"'And for the purpose of making this resolution effective, they 
further declare that they will not support for the office of president 
or vice president, or of senator or representative in Congress, or 
as a member of the state legislature, any man, of whatever party, 
who is not known to be opposed to the disturbance of the settle- 
ment aforesaid, and to the renewal in any form, of the agitation 
upon the subject of slavery. 

' Henry Clay H. A. Bullard 

Howell Cobb C. H. Wilhams 

C. S. Morehead T. S. Haymond 

William Duer J. Phillips Phoenix 

Robert L. Rose A. H. Sheppard 

H. S. Foote A. M. Schermerhorn 

William C. Dawson David Breck 

James Brooks John R. Thurman 

Thomas J. Rusk James L. Johnson 



342 



PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 



Alexander H. Stephens 
Jeremiah Clemens 
Robert Toombs 
James Cooper 
M. P. Gentry 
Thomas G. Pratt 
Henry W. Hilliard 
William M. Gwin 
F. E. McLean 
Samuel Eliot 
A. G. Watkins 
David Outlaw 
Alexander Evans 



D. A. Bokee 

J, B. Thompson 
George R. Andrews 
J. M. Anderson 
W, P. Mangum 
John B. Kerr 
Jeremiah Morton 
J. P. Caldwell 
R. I. Bowie 
Edmund Deberry 

E. C. Cabell 
Humphrey Marshall 
Allen F.Owen'" 



\ 



INDEX 



Abolitionists, their principles, 3-6, 10-12 ; 
support John Brown, 9-14 ; attacked 
by the South, 14-15; persecuted in 
Kentucky, 19 ; persecuted in the 
South, 19-20 ; condemned in Georgia, 
25 ; condemned by Caleb Gushing, 
27 ; condemned in Rochester, New 
York, 27 ; organization recommended 
in the South, 37 ; opposition to the 
slave trade, 79. 

Advertisements of runaway slaves, 61. 

Aggression, political: I, Democratic, 
141-197 ; (o) new policy of territorial 
expansion, 141-156, 249; changed 
principles of the Democratic party on 
slavery, 156-158 ; change in Gongres- 
sional practice, 158-159; change in 
the position of the Supreme Gourt, 
160; the "fathers" renounced, 161- 
163 ; (6) the aggression of secession, 
see Secession ; II, Republican, on 
slavery, 190-195 ; III, comparison of 
the two movements, 195-196. 

Alabama, supports William L. Yancey 
in 1847, 93 ; secession from Gharles- 
ton convention, 107 ; delegates re- 
jected by the Baltimore convention, 
108. 

Albany, New York, mourning for John 
Brown, 9 ; Evening Journal on Abra- 
ham Lincoln, 211. 

American Board of Gommissioners for 
Foreign Missions, reluctance to con- 
demn slavery, 87-88. 

American Sunday School Union, refusal 
to condemn slavery, 87. 

American Tract Society, refusal to con- 
demn slavery, 87 ; mutilation of 
tracts for the South, 88. 

Americans, political party, refuse to vote 
for John Sherman for speaker in the 
House of Representatives, 43 ; vote for 
William Pennington, 44. 

Amesbury, Massachusetts, mourning for 
John Brown 19. 

Anti-Lecompton Democrats, refuse to 



vote for John Sherman for speaker in 
the House of Representatives, 43 ; 
vote for William Pennington, 44. 

Arkansas, expells free negroes, 82-83 ; 
support slavery in the Methodist 
Episcopal Ghurch, 86 ; secedes from 
the Charleston convention, 107 ; dele- 
gates to Baltimore convention, 105. 

Asheville, North Carolina, expells abo- 
litionist, 21. 

Atlanta Confederacy, hostile to Northern- 
ers, 19 ; supports Stephen A. Douglas 
and secession, 185. 

Auburn, New York, fugitive slave re- 
ported, 66. 

Augusta, Georgia, expells James Gran- 
gale, 20 ; the Chronicle on burning of 
slaves, 60. 

Baltimore, Maryland, effect of the 
Impending C7isis on Police Gom- 
missioners, 45-46 ; effect on street 
railway charters, 46 ; adjourned ses- 
sions of Democratic convention, 108 ; 
speech by Stephen A. Douglas, 182, 
215. 

Bangor, Maine, refusal by Stephen A. 
Douglas to commit himself on slav- 
ery, 184. 

Banks,' Nathaniel P., speaker of the 
House of Representatives, 1856, 43 ; 
candidate for Republican presidential 
nomination, 122. 

Banners of parties, 230. 

"Barbarism of slavery," speech by 
Charles Sumner, 56-58. 

Barksdale, William, encounter with 
Owen Lovejoy of Illinois in the House 
of Representatives, 49. 

Batavia, New York, Republican trans- 
parencies, 227. 

Bates, Edward, candidate for Republi- 
can presidential nomination, 122. 

Beecher, Henry Ward, suggested preach- 
ing in Virginia, 19 ; on redemption of 
slaves, 64 ; defends American Board 
of Gommissioners for Foreign Mis- 



343 



344 



PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 



sions, 88; ridicules American Tract 
Society, 88; on "irrepressible con- 
flict," 118, note. 

Bell, John, Constitutional Union candi- 
date for the presidency, 131, note; 
favors moderation and compromise, 
179 ; criticism of his position, 186 ; 
straddle on slavery, 186-187 ; general 
characterization, 212 ; agrees to with- 
draw on conditions, 224; popular 
vote, 233. 

Benjamin, Judah P., attacks Stephen A. 
Douglas, 102-103. 

Berea, Kentucky, expels abolitionists, 
19. 

Bible, texts on slavery, 15-16. 

Blackwood's Magazine, on international 
influence of cotton, 169. 

Blair, Frank P., prominent in Republi- 
can national conv^ention, 131. 

Bocock, Thomas S., candidate for 
speaker of the House of Representa- 
tives, 33. 

Booth, Sherman M., prosecuted for rescue 
of a fugitive slave, 67-69. 

Border states, part in national politics, 
115; opposition to the foreign slave 
trade, 79 ; support slavery in the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, 85-86. 

Boston, Massachusetts, wealth compared 
with that of North Carolina, 35 ; fugi- 
tive slave reported, 66 ; speech by 
William L. Yancey, 215-217; Re- 
publican parade and transparencies, 
227. 

Boyce, William W., favors secession, 178. 

Branch, Lawrence O., challenges Ga- 
lusha A. Grow to a duel, 43. 

Breckenridge, John C, Vice President 
of the United States, praises popular 
sovereignty, 1852 and 1856, 95; 
nominated for the presidency, 109 ; 
sudden support of the Supreme Court, 
153 ; only slight opposition to seces- 
sion, 174-175, 184-185; general char- 
acterization, 212 ; agrees to withdraw 
on conditions, 224 ; popular vote, 
233 ; on popular sovereignty, 333-334. 

Brown, Albert G., United States Sena- 
tor, on territorial expansion, 148. 

Brown, John, abolition attack on Harp- 
er's Ferry, 2 ; record in the West, 2 ; 
estimates by enemies, 2 ; interviewed 
by newspaper reporter, 3 ; his moral 
defense, 4 ; his trial, 4-5 ; speech to 
the court, 5 ; in prison, 6 ; attitude 



on slavery, 6; letters to his family^ 
6-8 ; repulses Southern clergymen, 8 ; 
execution, 8 ; celebrations of his mar- 
tyrdom, 99 ; defense by William Lloyd 
Garrison, 10 ; alleged insanity, 13 ; 
supported by abolitionists, 9-14 ; 
opposed by Southern states, 14-26; 
opposition of South Carolina, 24 ; 
opposition of citizens of Georgia, 
24-26 ; opposition of Democrats of 
the North, 26-29 ; inspired by William 
H. Seward, 28 ; inspired by civil war 
in Kansas, 28-29 ; supported by Re- 
publican papers, 30-31 ; general in- 
fluence on politics, 31-32; raid in- 
vestigated by the United States Sen- 
ate, 51-52; influence on the popular 
discussion of slavery, 59-61 ; influ- 
ence on the condition of the free ne- 
groes, 82-85 ; aspersed by the Re- 
publican platform, 125; imitations 
would follow under Republican rule, 
164. 

Brown, John, Jr., evades arrest, 52-53. 

Brownlow, W. G., encounter with Wil- 
liam L. Yancey, 180 ; favors coercion, 
180 ; speech at Knoxville, Tennessee, 
330. 

Bryant, William Cullen, on John Brown, 
30; advice to candidate Lincoln, 212; 
speech after election, 234-235. 

Buchanan, James, President of the 
United States, sends troops to Harp- 
er's Ferry, 2 ; favors pardon for all 
convicted of engaging in foreign slave 
trade, 78 ; returns captured blacks to 
Africa, 81 ; praises popular sovereignty 
in 1856, 95 ; praises Dred Scott deci- 
sion in 1860, 101 ; Pittsburg letter, 
133 ; opposition to Covode Investi- 
gation Committee, 133-134, 140-141 ; 
corruption, 134-141, 331-332; profes- 
sions of honesty, 140-141 ; favors 
annexation of Cuba, 141-142 ; Mexi- 
can policy, 142-146 ; opposes Su- 
preme Court in 1841, 154; unfriendly 
to coercion, 173 ; loss of physical 
powers and popularity, 218-219; 
pathetic campaign speech, 219-220; 
threat to Stephen A. Douglas, 224, 
287 ; attacks on his character in the 
campaign, 231. 

Burlingame, Anson, advises Illinois 
Republicans to support Stephen A. 
Douglas, 101 ; desires abolition of 
slavery, 193. 



PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 



345 



Burning of slaves, 59-60. 

Butler, Benjamin F., signs minority 
platform at Democratic convention, 
106. 

Calhoun, John C, denies approval of 
Missouri Compromise, 159, note; sel- 
dom mentioned in the campaign, 220. 

California, lost to the South, 96 ; sup- 
ports the South in Democratic national 
convention, 106 ; small Lincoln ma- 
jority, 233. 

Cameron, Simon, candidate for Republi- 
can presidential nomination, 122. 

Campaign, general characteristics, 230- 
232. 

Campaign arguments, corruption, 132- 
141 ; political aggression, 141-197 ; 
tariff, 197-198 ; internal improve- 
ments, 198-199 ; Pacific railroad, 199- 
201 ; Pacific telegraph, 201 ; home- 
stead act, 201-204. 

Cass, Lewis, presidential candidate in 
1848, 93. 

Charleston, South Carolina, industrial 
conditions compared with those of 
Philadelphia, 35 ; treatment of free 
negroes, 84 ; Democratic national 
convention, 106 ; seceder's convention 
107 ; William L. Yancey predicts a 
Southern Confederacy, 178, note ; the 
Mercury on Abraham Lincoln, 210 ; 
the Mercury on prosecution of North- 
ern men in the South, 216. 

Charlestown, West Virginia, aids Harp- 
er's Ferry, 2 ; trial of John Brown, 4. 

Chase, Ormund, killed in Mexico, 143. 

Chase, Salmon P., his presidency as an 
inciting cause of secession, 42 ; candi- 
date for Republican presidential nomi- 
nation, 122. 

Chestnut, James, excoriates Charles 
Sumner in the United States Senate, 
57-58. 

Chicago, the Tribune story of a slave 
kidnapping case, 72 ; the Herald 
would absorb Mexico, 145 ; the Demo- 
crat would destroy slavery, 191 ; Re- 
publican majority, 233. 

Childs, Lydia M., attack on slavery 15- 
19. 

Churches, attitude on slavery, 85-89; 
Methodist Episcopal, 85-87 ; Bap- 
tist, Congregational, Free Will Bap- 
tist, Presbyterian, Protestant Epis- 
copal, United Brethren, United Pres- 
byterian, Wesleyan Methodist, 87. 



Church services, disturbed by John 
Brown's career, 26. 

Cincinnati, arrival of expelled aboli- 
tionists from Kentucky, 19 ; fugitive 
slave reported, 66 ; habeas corpus 
refused to slave, 69 ; kidnapping of 
free negroes, 71 ; arrival of exiled free 
negroes from Arkansas, 82 ; speech 
by William L. Yancey, 215. 

Civilizing influence of slavery, 50, 61-62, 
80. 

Clark, John B., opposes Impending 
Crisis in the House of Representa- 
tives, 33. 

Clay, C. C, on the decline of Southern 
agriculture, 37. 

Clay, Cassius M., candidate for Repub- 
lican presidential nomination, 122 ; 
for abolition of slavery, 139. 

Clay, Henry, on slavery, 40, 162 ; rever- 
ently mentioned in the campaign, 220. 

Cleveland, Ohio, public meeting on the 
date of John Brown's execution, 9. 

Cobb, Howell, speaker of the House of 
Representatives, 1849, 43 ; praises 
popular sovereignty, 1856, 95 ; fears 
after rupture of Charleston conven- 
tion, 108. 

Coercion, opposition of William L. 
Yancey, 166 ; not feared from Bu- 
chanan, 173 ; expected from Lincoln, 
173 ; favored by W. G. Brownlow, 180 ; 
seldom noticed by the Republicans, 
188 ; supported by Stephen A. Doug- 
las, 296. 

Columbia, South Carolina, expulsion of 
James Powers, 20. 

Columbus, Georgia, Chronicle, slave 
burning case, 60. 

Columbus, Ohio, disturbance of church 
service over John Brown, 26. 

Commercial intercourse between the 
North and the South, 23, 36, 315-319. 

Comonfort, Mexican general, 142. 

Comparison of the North and the South, 
by Hinton Rowan Helper, 34-40, by 
Charles Sumner, 57 ; and by William 
L. Yancey, 306-309. 

Compromise, renounced by citizens of 
Georgia, 25 ; and by the South in 
general, 105; supported by candidate 
Bell, 179. 

Congress, power over territories denied, 
96 ; the record of Congressional con- 
trol over territories before the Dred 
Scott decision, 158-159. 



346 



PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 



Congress: I, Senate, struggle over pun- 
ishment of contumacious witness, 53- 
54 ; foregoes legislation till organiza- 
tion of the House, 54-55. II, House 
of Representatives, contest over the 
speakership, 33-45; architectural ar- 
rangement of seats, 41 ; threats of 
secession, 41-42 ; quarrels of mem- 
bers, 42-43, 51 ; rules for speakership 
election, 43 ; speaker practically does 
not appoint his committees, 44, note ; 
investigation of the Executive, 132- 
141 ; censure of a Cabinet member, 
136; possibility of a House election 
of the President of the United States, 
221-223. 
Connecticut, personal liberty law, 67 ; 
suffrage denied to free negroes, 85 ; 
resolutions on territorial slavery in 
1847, 157; small Breckenridge vote, 
233. 
Constitution, interpretation dependent 
on predominant interests, 255-256; 
interpretation of slavery clauses by 
Yancey, 304-306. 
Constitutional Union party, nomina- 
tions, 131, note; platform, 242; gen- 
eral criticism by Carl Schurz, 256-257 ; 
see Campaign arguments. Bell, Ever- 
ett, Secession, etc. 
Convention, Democratic national, 92- 
116; preceding factional debates, 92- 
106; the Charleston sessions, 106- 
107 ; struggle over the platform, 106- 
107 ; historical review of conventions, 
109, note ; fruitless balloting, 107 ; 
the seceders' convention, 107, 109 ; 
the Baltimore sessions, 108-109 ; 
Douglas platform, 240 ; Breckenridge 
platform, 241 ; questions in dispute, 
109-115; power of a convention to 
reject a report of a committee, 109- 
110; two-thirds rule, 110-112, 111, 
note; unit rule, 112-113; bolting, 25, 
113 ; power of the national committee 
to nominate, 113-114; general ob- 
servations, 114; why the Southern 
states sent delegates to Baltimore, 114- 
115; purpose of the Charleston seces- 
sion, 115-116; the alleged plot to dis- 
rupt the convention, 196-197. 
Convention, Republican national, 117- 
131 ; reasons for Seward's defeat, 117- 
122 ; candidates, 122 ; composition, 
123; method of voting, 123; plat- 
form, 124-125, 237 ; the nominations, 



125-126; the candidate, 126-130; 
influence of the crowd, 130-131. 
Convention of Southern states proposed, 

24. 
Corruption in administration, attacked 
in Republican platform, 125 ; an 
issue in the campaign, 132-141 ; the 
Covode Committee, 132-136; in the 
departments, 136-141 ; on small scale 
in the political campaign, 230; Bell- 
Everett charges, 331-332. 
Cotton, volume of crop, 167 ; prices, 
167 ; international influence, 168-170. 
Courts of law and slavery, 16-17. 
Crangale, James, expulsion from Au- 
gusta, Georgia, 20. 
Crawford, Martin J., threatens secession 

in Congress, 42. 
Crittenden, .John J., criticizes Buchanan 
policy of territorial expansion, 148- 
149. 
Cuba, contemplated annexation, 141- 
142; inevitably lost under a Repub- 
lican administration, 163. 
Curry, J. L. M., threatens secession in 

Congress, 42 ; favors secession, 178. 
Curtin, Jeremiah, Republican candidate 
for governor in Pennsylvania, 126; 
opposition to candidacy of William H. 
Seward, 126. 
Curtis, George W., part in Republican 

convention, 131. 
Gushing, Caleb, on abolitionists, 27 ; 
chairman of the Democratic conven- 
tion at Charleston, 106. 
Danvers, Massachusetts, mourns for 

John Brown, 9. 
Davis, Henry W., censured by the legis- 
lature of Maryland, 46. 
[ Davis, Jefferson, author of Senate reso- 
lutions on Democratic policy, 102 ; 
favors secession, 178. 
Daxas, Reuben, for secession, 178. 
Declaration of Independence', in Repub- 
lican platform, 123, 131. 
Defense of slavery, 61-63. 
Delaware, supports slavery in the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, 85; 
sends delegates to the seceders' 
Democratic convention, 107 ; small 
Republican vote, 233. 
Democratic factions, origin, 92-93; 
failure to secure harmony in 1848, 93 ; 
failure of Compromise of 1850 to 
secure harmony, 94; lack of harmony 
in 1852, 94; reconciliation attempted 



PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 



347 



by Stephen A. Douglas in 1854, 94; pop- 
ularity of this step in 1856, 94-96 ; Su- 
preme Court attempts a new reconcil- 
iation in the Dred Scott decision, 96-97 ; 
disputes over the Di-ed Scott case, 97 ; 
clash over the Lecompton constitu- 
tion, 99-101 ; quarrels of 1860 before 
the convention, 101-103 ; Stephen 
A. Douglas' stand on the John Brown 
raid, 103-104; the quarrel irrecon- 
cUable, 104-106. 

Democratic party, Breckenridge, criti- 
cism by Carl Schurz, 201-262; see 
Conventions, John C. Breckenridge, 
Joseph Lane, Campaign arguments, 
Secession, Aggression, etc. 

Democratic party, Douglas, see Conven- 
tions, Stephen A. Douglas, Herschel 
'V. Johnson, Campaign arguments, Se- 
cession, Aggression, etc. 

Detroit, Michigan, threatens South- 
erners traveling in the state, 69-70. 

District of Columbia, supports slavery 
in the Methodist Episcopal Church, 
85-86 ; not mentioned in the Repub- 
lican platform, 125. 

Douglas, Stephen A., leader of a Demo- 
cratic faction, 92 ; Kansas-Nebraska 
act, 94; estimate of the position of 
candidate Breckenridge, 95-96 ; de- 
serted by the South, 96 ; rejects Dred 
Scott decision, 97 ; delivers Freeport 
doctrine, 97-98 ; considers joining 
Republican party, 100-101 ; attacked 
in the United States Senate, 102-103 ; 
speech on Harper's Ferry raid, 103- 
104 ; failure to be nominated at 
Charleston convention, 107 ; nomi- 
nated at Baltimore, 109 ; expansion- 
ist, 141 ; on supremacy of white men, 
152; neutral position on slavery, 161, 
184 ; opposition to secession, 180- 
183 ; favors coercion, 181 ; welcomes 
chance to stand against secession 
183-184; character sketch, 205-206; 
presidential ambitions, 206-207 ; cam- 
paign tour of the country, 207 ; charac- 
terized by Artemas Ward, 207-209; 
expresses respect for Abraham Lin- 
coln, 212 ; opposes fusion, 224 ; re- 
fuses to withdraw from presidential 
campaign, 224 ; attacks Buchanan on 
the spoils system, 224 ; predicts 
Lincoln's election, 233 ; popular vote, 
233 ; speech in full at Raleigh, North 
Carolina, 276. 



Dred Scott decision, 96-97; accepted 
by the South, 96-97 ; rejected as a 
platform of the Douglas Democratic 
party, 106 ; menace to the free states, 
155-156 ; repetition improbable under 
a Republican administration, 164 ; 
Stephen A. Douglas supports it in 
the South, 290-291. 

Edgefield, South Carolina, constitution 
of the Minute Man, 230. 

Education, of slaves, 17 ; comparison of 
conditions in the North and in the 
South, 252-255. 

Elections, spring, 120; early fall, 232; 
November, 233. 

Electoral colleges, customary institu- 
tions, 223. 

Emblems of party. Democratic rooster, 
230 ; Republican elephant, 230. 

Evarts, William M., on the Lemmon 
case, 70-71, 71, note; supports Re- 
publican candidacy of William H. 
Seward, 126. 

Everett, Edward, Constitutional Union 
vice-presidential candidate, 131, note; 
antislavery record, 187. 

Expansion, territorial, 141-163; Cuba, 
141-142; Mexico, 142-146; Para- 
guay, 146 ; Nicaragua, 147 ; criti- 
cisms, 148-149 ; the consequent spread 
of slavery to the territories, 149-153 ; 
the part of the Supreme Court, 153- 
155 ; the consequent spread of slav- 
ery to the free states, 155-156 ; the 
part of the foreign slave trade in the 
expansionist program, 156. 

"Fathers" of the Republic, renounced 
by the Democratic party, 161-163. 

Fessenden, William Pitt, candidate for 
Republican presidential nomination, 
122. 

Fillmore, Millard, views on John Brown, 
28-29 ; inconspicuous in the campaign, 
218. 

Fisk, Small H., expulsion from the South, 
20. 

Fitzpatrick, Benjamin, Breckenridge 
Democratic vice presidential candi- 
date, 109. 

Flag raisings, 230. 

Fleetwood's Life of Christ, circulation 
forbidden in Alabama, 21. 

Florida, veto of bill on free negroes, 83; 
secession from Charleston convention, 
107 ; represented in Richmond conven- 
tion, 108 ; its territorial laws submitted 



348 



PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 



to Congress, 159; Supreme Court 
decision on power of Congress over 
territories, 160 ; right to secede, 173. 

Forney, John W., refuses to vote for the 
Leconipton constitution, 138. 

Frank Leslie's Illustrated Weekly, pic- 
ture of John Brown's execution, 9; 
views on absorption of Mexico, 145. 

Free negroes, condition, 71, 82 ; victims 
of kidnappers, 71; laws for their 
oppression, 82-85. 

Freeport, Illinois, "Freeport" doctrine 
of Stephen A. Douglas, 98 ; Southern 
explanation of the same by Douglas, 
289-290. 

Free speech, denied in the South, 19- 
22, 215-217, 245-246; practice in the 
North, 252-253. 

Free states, threatened by slavery 
155-156; saved to freedom, 163-164. 

Fremont, John C, inconspicuous in the 
campaign, 218. 

Fugitive Slave Law, "Union-saving" meets 
following its enactment, 29; its ap- 
plication, 65-6G; not mentioned in the 
Republican platform, 125; Southern 
position, 248. 

Fugitive slaves, source of information 
on slavery, 18; Owen Lovejoy on their 
rescue, 65; cases of roscu(!S, 65-66, 
67-69; flight northward, 66; rendered 
up to the South, 66; probable increase 
of the movement if Republicans 
come into power, 164; Southern inter- 
pretation of the constitutional as- 
pects of the case, 306; humorous 
question, 316. 

Fusion, extent, 223; lack of moral prin- 
ciple, 224; defeat, 233. 

Galena, Illinois, kidnapping case, 71. 

Garibaldi, compared to "William Walker, 
147. 

Garrison, William Lloyd, on John Brown, 

10. 
Gartell, Lucius J., threatens secession 

in Congress, 42. 
Georgetown, Massachusetts, mourns for 

John Brown, 9. 
Georgia, supports William L. Yancey 
in 1847, 93; secedes from Charleston 
convention, 107; sends delegates 
to Baltimore, 108; cession of lands to 
Congress, 159. 
Giddings, Joshua R., in Republican 
convention, 131; for abolition of slavery, 
193. 



Gist, William H., for secession, 178. 
Glover, Joshua, a fugitive slave rescued, 



Grafton, Illinois, kidnapping case, 71. 
Greeley, Horace, on Southern trade with 
the North, 23; on John Brown, 30; 
on Thaddeus Hyatt, 54; on burning 
of slaves, 60; on rcdemi)tion of blacks 
from slavery, 63-64 ; on fugitive slaves 
64-65; ridicules proslavery Ameri- 
can Tract Society, 88; advice to Illi- 
nois Republicans to elect Stephen 
A. Douglas to the Senate of the United 
States, 101; opposes William H. Seward, 
121-122, 126, 130, note; will not touch 
slavery in the states, 163; desires aboli- 
tion of slavery, 192-193; favors Pa- 
cific Railroad, 199-201; characteriza- 
tion, 220-221; general estimate of 
the campaign, 231. 

Greenfield, Massachusetts, report of a 
fugitive slave, 66. 

Grow, Galusha A., candidate for the speak- 
ership in the House of Representatives, 
33 ; challenged to a duel, 43. 

Guthrie, James, candidate for Demo- 
cratic presidential nomination, 107. 

Hale, John P., candidate for Republican 
presidential nomination, 122; favors 
abolition of slavery, 193. 

Hamblctou, J. P., for secession, 185. 

Hamlin, Hannibal, Republican] vice 
presidential candidate, 129, note. 

Hannibal, Missouri, theft of slaves, 71. 

Harper's Ferry, attack by John Brown, 1; 
military defense by Governor Wise, 
22. 

Harper's Weekly, picture of Republican 
cami)aign parade, 226. 

Hartford, Connecticut, newspaper sen- 
timent on John Brown, 31. 

Havana, Cuba, slave market, 74. 

Haverhill, Massachusetts, mourns for 
John Brown, 9. 

Helper, Hinton Rowan, writes Impend- 
ing Crisis, 34. 

Henry, Patrick, on slavery, 40. 

Heroes ^of antislavery, John Brown, 13; 
Hinton Rowan Helper, 34; Daniel 
Worth, 46; Thaddeus Hyatt, 52-54; 
John HoBsack, 65-66; Sherman M. 
Booth, 67-69. 

Hickman, John, on Stephen A. Douglas, 
104. 

High Point, North Carolina, burning of 
copies of Impending Crisis, 46. 



PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 



349 



Homestead Act, in Republican platform 
125; arguments for and against, 201- 
204, 250. 

Hossack, John, rescues fugitive slaves, 
65-66. 

"House divided againsl itself," 127; 
criticism by Stephen A. Douglas, ,'?92. 

Houston, Texas, Telegraph on Abraham 
Lincoln, 210-211. 

Howe, Samuel G., supporter of John 
Brown, 13. 

Hugo, Victor, on John Brown's trial, 12. 

Hunter, R. M. T., candidate for Demo- 
cratic presidential nomination, 107. 

Hyatt, Thaddeus, imprisoned by United 
States Senate, 53-54 ; opinion of Horace 
Greeley, 54. 

Illinois, refuses extradition to Southern 
states, 69; laws on free negroes, 84; 
opposes William H. Seward in Repub- 
lican convention, 126; on territorial 
slavery in 1847, 157; small Brecken- 
ridge vote, 233. 

Impending Crisis denounced by Dem- 
ocrats in the House of Representa- 
tives, 33; indorsed by Republicans, 
34; comparison of North and South, 
34-35; 40, note; attacks on slave- 
holders, 37-40; effect of the book on 
the House, 41-45; effect on the country, 
45-46. 

Indiana, laws on free negroes, 84; opposi- 
tion to William H. Seward at Republi- 
can convention, 126; on territorial 
slavery in 1847, 157; application, 126; of 
Northwest Ordinance, 169 ; small Breck- 
enridge vote, 233. 

Infirmities of slaves, 48-50. 

Insurrection of slaves, 172-173. 

Internal improvements in Republican 
platform, 125; opposition of President 
Buchanan, 198-199; support of the 
Republicans, 198; Pacific railroad, 
199-201; Pacific telegraph, 201. 

Iowa, refuses extradition to Virginia of 
member of John Brown's band, 69; 
Congressional power over its territorial 
laws, 159; small Breckenridge vote, 
233. 

Iowa City, Iowa, negro kidnapping case, 
71. 

"Irrepressible conflict," 118-119; for- 
saken by William H. Seward before 
the party convention, 119-120; es- 
poused again by him during the cam- 
paign, 213. 



Jackson, Andrew, on the Supreme Court, 
153-154. 

Jefferson, Thomas, on slavery, 12, 161; 
on emancipation, 40; on the Supreme 
Court, 153. 

Johnson, Andrew, candidate for Demo- 
cratic presidential nomination, 107; 
criticism of Republican policy as to, 
territories, 152. 

Johnson, Herschel V., Douglas candidate 
for the vice presidency, 109; on the 
break up of the Charleston convention, 
108; for secession in 1856, 185. 

Juarez, Mexican general, 142. 

Kansas, Kansas-Nebraska Act, 94; lost 
to the South, 96, 100; Lecompton con- 
stitution, 99-100. 

Kansas-Nebraska Act, cause of John 
Brown's raid, 29; followed by " Union- 
saving" meetings, 29; provieions oa 
slavery, 94; unaffected by Dr«d Scott 
decision, 97-98. 

Keitt, L. M., for secession, 178. 

Kentucky, extradition of criminals from 
Northern states, 69; bill on free ne- 
groes, 83; support of slavery in the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, 86; rep- 
resented in seceders' Democratic con- 
vention, 107; small Lincoln vote, 133. 

Key West, Florida, temporary home of 
captured Africans, 80-81. 

Kidnapping of free negroes, 71-73. 

Knights of the Golden Circle, 148. 

Know-Nothing party, rejection of Seward, 
121. 

Knoxville, Tennessee, expulsion of aboli- 
tionist, 21; encounter of William L. 
Yancey and W. G. Brownlow, ISO; 
full speech by W. G. Brownlow, 330. 

Lafayette, French general, on slavery, 16. 

Lancaster, Pennsylvania, kidnapping 
case, 71. 

Lane, Henry S., Republican candidate 
for Governor in Indiana, 126 ; opposi- 
tion to William H. Seward, 126. 

Lane, Joseph, Breckenridge candidate 
for the vice presidency, 109 ; chance for 
the presidency, if choice fell to the 
House of Representatives, 223. 

Lansing, Michigan, speech of William 

H. Seward, 192. 
Lawrence, Kansas, Sentinel on kidnapping 

of free negroes, 71. 
Lawrence, Massachusetts, fall of Pem- 

berton mills, 170, note. 
League of United Southerners, 177, 



350 



PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 



Lecompton constitution, its discussion 
in Congress attended by " Union-sav- 
ing " meetings, 29 ; the quarrel in Con- 
gress, 99-100. 

Lee, Robert E., in command of United 
States marines at Harper's Ferry, 2. 

Lemmon, Jonathan, loses slaves in New 
York, 70-71 ; probable appeal to the 
United States Supreme Court, 70-71 ; 
probable antislavery decision under 
Republican administration, 164. 

Lexington, Kentucky, advertisement of 
runaway slaves, 17 ; speech by Stephen 
A. Douglas, 95. 

Lincoln, Abraham, forces "Freeport 
doctrine" from Stephen A. Douglas, 
98; refuses Eastern advice to support 
Douglas for the United States sena- 
torship, 101 ; presidential nomination, 
126 ; his record, 126-127 ; on moral 
wrong of slavery, 127-129; harmo- 
nizes factions, 129; "honest," 121, 
139-140, opposition to the Supreme 
Court, 155; friendly to coercion, 
173 ; his election a justification of 
secession, 163-165; the same denied, 
181 ; favors destruction of slavery, 
193; characterization, 209-211; in- 
active in the campaign, 211-212; 
respected by Stephen A. Douglas, 
212 ; snubbed by WilHam H. Seward, 
213-214; Republicans only gradually 
learned to honor him, 231 ; popular 
vote, 233. 

Logan, John A., draws pistol on colleague 
in House of Representatives, 43. 

London Economist, on international in- 
fluence of cotton, 170. 

Lord, Nathan, president of Dartmouth 
College, praises slavery, 62. 

Louisiana, supports William L. Yancey 
in 1S47, 93 ; secession from Charleston 
convention 107; delegates rejected at 
Baltimore, 108 ; right to secede, 173 ; 
small Brcckcuridge majority, 233. 

Lovejoy, Owen, antislavery speech in 
the House of Representatives, 47- 
51; on John Brown, 51; on Helper's 
Impending Crisis, 51 ; on rescue of 
fugitive .slaves, 65. 
Lynn, Massachusetts, mourns for John 

Brown, 9. 
Madison, James, on slavery, 40. 
Magrath, Andrew G., judge of the United 
States District Court, on the foreign 
slave trade, 78. 



Maine, personal liberty law, 67; small 
Breckenridge vote, 233. 

Majority rule, for election of speaker ^ 
in the House of Representatives, 43. 

Marching clubs. Republican, see Wide 
Awakes ; Democratic, 228-229. 

Marcy, William L., "dinner to the candi- 
dates" in 1856, 206. 

Marriage, denied to slaves, 57, 61. 

Marshall, Michigan, threat to Southern- 
ers traveling in the state, 70. 

Martinsburg, Virginia, aid to Harper's 
Ferry, 2. 

Maryland, bill on free negroes, 83 ; 
supports slavery in the Methodist 
Episcopal Church, 85; small Brecken- 
ridge majority, 233 ; small Republican 
vote, 233. 

Mason, James M., moves in the United 
States Senate to investigate Harper's 
Ferry, 51-52; wife attacks John Brown 
and Northern abohtionists, 14-15. 

Massachusetts, State Senate on John 
Brown's death, 9; industrial condi- 
tions compared with those in North 
Carolina, 35 ; personal liberty law, 67 ; 
on territorial slavery in 1847, 157 ; small 
Breckenridge vote, 233. 

McClure, William S., expelled from South 
Carohna, 216. 

McLean, John, candidate for Republican 
presidential nomination, 122. 

McQueen, John, encounter with Love- 
joy of Illinois in the House of Repre- 
sentatives on slavery-, 49-50. 

McRae, .John J., for secession, 178. 

McWillie, William, for secession, 178. 

Mecklenburg Declaration of Indepen- 
dence, praised by candidate Douglas, 
276. 

Medical students of the South, departure 
from the North, 22. 

Methodist Episcopal Church, for ex- 
pulsion of abolitionist from Alabama, 
21 ; refused charter for University 
in Missouri, 23. 

Mexico, suffers aggression from the United 
States, 142-146 ; civil war, 142 ; out- 
rages on Americans, 142-143; at- 
tempted legislation by the United 
States, 143; attempted treaty, 143- 
144; Vera Cruz incident, 144-145; 
passed over by Democratic platforms, 
146 ; no hope of absorption by the 
United States under a Republican 
administration, 163. 



PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 



351 



Michigan, personal liberty law, 67; 
law on bringing slaves into the state, 
69 ; on territorial slavery in 1847, 156. 

Military companies, voluntary, in the 
South, 23. _ 

Milwaukee, Wisconsin, fugitive slave 
case, 67-69. 

Minute men, constitution, 230. 

Miramon, Mexican general, 142. 

Mississippi, bill on free negroes, 83; 
supports William L. Yancey in 1847, 
93 ; secession from Charleston con- 
vention, 107 ; delegates to both Rich- 
mond and Baltimore convention, 108. 

Missouri, bill on free negroes, 82-83 ; 
supports slavery in the Methodist 
Episcopal Church, 86; represented in 
Democratic seceders' convention, 107 ; 
slavery restricted, 159 ; small Douglas 
majority, 233 ; small Republican vote, 
233. 

Mobile, Alabama, Register on territorial 
expansion Southward, 147. 

Monroe, James, on slavery, 40, 161. 

Montgomery, Alabama, William L. Yan- 
cey for secession 176 ; League of United 
Southerners, 177. 

Morgan, J. T., for secession, 178. 

Natchez, Mississippi, advertisement of 
runaway slaves, 17. 

Nationalization of slavery, 70-71. 

Naturalization law, in Republican plat- 
form, 125 ; frauds, 138. 

Navy, Secretary of, censured for cor- 
ruption, 136. 

Navy Yard, Brooklyn, New York, politi- 
cal conditions, 136-138. 

Nebraska, Kansas-Nebraska Act, 94. 

Newark, New Jersey, speech by Stephen 
A. Douglas, 206-207. 

New Hampshire, personal liberty law, 
67 ; on territorial slavery in 1847, 156 ; 
small Breckenridge vote, 233. 

New Haven, Connecticut, Journal and 
Courier on John Brown, 31 ; Palladium 
on John Brown, 31 ; speech by Abraham 
Lincoln, 128 ; Palladium desires fall 
of slavery, 193. 

New Jersey, personal liberty law, 67; 
partial victory for fusion, 233. 

New York, New York, arrival of refugees 
from the South, 21 ; "Union-saving" 
meeting 26 ; wealth compared with that 
of Virginia, 35; fugitive slaves, 66; 
fugitive slaves rendered up to the South, 
66; attack upon slaves of visiting 



Southern mihtia company, 69 ; Lem" 
mon slave case, 70-71 ; fitting out of 
slavers, 76 ; arrival of persecuted free 
negroes from the South, 84; Lincoln's 
Cooper Union speech, 127-128; prob- 
able decline from loss of cotton trade, 
171 ; Republican parade, 226-227 ; 
heavy majority against Liacoln, 233 : 
speech by William L. Yancey, 301: 
Evening Post, on John Brown, 30 : 
statistics on foreign slave trade, 74 : 
corruption of New York Legislature, 
131; on the political campaign, 231; 
Express, on absorption of Mexico, 145: 
Herald, interview with John Brown, 3: 
extracts from the Impending Crisis 
34 ; statistics on foreign slave trade, 74 
letter from President Buchanan on 
corruption, 140-141 ; on Abraham Lin- 
coln, 210 ; on determination of William 
H. Seward to rule Abraham Lincoln, 
214, note; popularity, 220; Inde- 
pendent on John Brown, 30 ; re- 
demption of the enslaved, 63-64 ; ridi- 
cules proslavery American Tract 
Society, 88 ; challenge to proslavery 
Observer, 89; Observer, excoriated by 
William Lloyd Garrison, 10 ; perse- 
cuted for defense of slavery, 89; 
Times, on John Brown, 31 ; hedges 
on popular sovereignty, 150 ; popular- 
ity, 220; Tribune, on John Brown, 30; 
on burning of slaves, 59-60 ; on re- 
demption of slaves, 64 ; on fugitive 
slaves, 64 ; ridicules proslavery Ameri- 
can Tract Society, 88; on corruption 
of New York Legislature, 121 ; opposi- 
tion to Seward for President, 121 ; 
hedges on popular sovereignty, 150 ; 
on Abraham Lincoln, 211 ; popularity, 
220; World, general estimate of the 
campaign, 230-231. 

Newburyport, Massachusetts, mourns 
for John Brown, 9. 

Newspapers of the North, burned in the 
South, 22 ; supported by government 
patronage, 134-136. 

Newspapers of the South, advertisements 
of slavery 16, 17. 

New York State, industrial conditions 
compared with those in Virginia, 34; 
personal liberty law, 67 ; legislative 
report on personal liberty laws, 67, 
note ; suffrage to free negroes, 84 ; on 
teriitorial slavery in 1847, 157 ; Re- 
publican defeat of fusion, 233. 



352 



PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 



Nicholson letter, views of Lewis Cass 
on popular sovereignty, 93, note. 

Norfolk, Virginia, speech by Stephen 
A. Douglas on secession and coercion, 
180-181. 

North Carolina, industrial conditions 
compared with those in Massachusetts, 
35 ; source of domestic slave trade, 
82 ; represented in Democratic se- 
ceders' convention, 107. 

Northwestern states, alleged sjonpathy 
with the South, 172. 

Norwich, Connecticut, newspaper senti- 
ment on John Brown, 31. 

Nullification of United States law, 66-69. 

Objectionable elements of slavery, 57. 

O 'Conor, Charles, on slavery, 26; on 
the Lemmon slave case, 70-71, 71, note. 

Ohio, refusal of extradition to Virginia, 
69 ; same to Kentucky and Tennessee, 
69 ; on territorial slavery in 1847, 157 ; 
small Breckenridge vote, 233. 

Oregon, laws on free negroes, 84; with 
the South in Democratic convention, 
106 ; forbids slavery, 159 ; small 
Lincoln majority 233. 

Orleans, territory, organization, 160. 

Orion, slaver, 73 ; conviction of owner 
and officers, 79, note. 

Orr, James L., for secession, 178. 

Ottawa, Illinois, rescue of a fugitive slave, 
65-66. 

Pacific railroad, in Republican platform, 
125 ; arguments for, 199-201. 

Pacific telegraph, 201. 

Patents, possible infringement of United 
States patents by an independent 
Southern Confederacy, 171. 

Patronage, in election of speaker Pen- 
nington, 43 ; corrupt use in popular 
political contests, 134-141 ; to cer- 
tain newspapers, 134-136; signs of 
reform, 140 ; an aid in creating a Repub- 
lican party in the South, 164 ; in ac- 
tual practice in the campaign, 224- 
225 ; general sweep of officers expected 
under new administration, 225 ; James 
Buchanan and Stephen A. Douglas, 287. 

Pemberton mills, Lawrence, Massachu- 
setts, fall of, 170, note. 

Pennington, William, elected speaker of 
the House of Representatives, 45, and 
note; record, 44; does not appoint 
his own committees, 44, note: candi- 
date for Republican presidential 
nomination, 122. 



Pennsylvania, industrial conditions com- 
pared with those in South Carolina, 35 ; 
personal liberty law, 67 ; opposition to 
Seward at Republican convention, 126 ; 
on territorial slavery in 1847, 157 ; Re- 
publican defeat of fusion, 233. 

Perry, Edward A., for secession, 178. 

Persecution of Northern men in Southern 
states, 19-22, 215-217. 

Personal liberty laws, their nature, 66-67 ; 
attitude of Virginia legislature, 67, 
note ; attitude of New York legisla- 
ture, 67, note. 

Pettus, J. J., for secession, 178. 

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, industrial 
prosperity compared with that of 
Charleston, South Carolina, 35 ; fugi- 
tive slave rendered up to the South, 66 ; 
arrival of persecuted free negroes from 
the South, 84 ; Lincoln majority, 233. 

Pierce, Franklin, inconspicuous in the 
campaign, 218. 

Platforms, party, 237. 

Plurality rule, for speakership in the 
House of Representatives, 43. 

Pole raisings, common in the campaign, 
230. 

Polk, James K., President of the United 
States, investigated by Congress, 
133; intention to veto Wilmot Pro- 
viso, 159, note. 

Pollard, Edward A., defense of slavery, 
61-62. 

Polygamy, with slavery a "twin relic of 
barbarism," 47 ; attempt in Congress to 
forbid it, 152, note. 

Popular sovereignty, popularity in the 
South in 1847, 93; support of Lewis 
Cass, 93, note ; embodied in Kansas- 
Nebraska Act, 94 ; praised by President 
Buchanan in 1856, 95; desertion of 
the South, 96-97; not destroyed by 
Dred Scott decision, 97-98 ; differences 
in 1856 and 1860, 99; distinguished from 
squatter sovereignty, 99, note ; favor- 
able arguments, 105-106 ; in majority 
platform of the Democratic party, 
106; Douglas arguments, 149-150; 
hedging by Republican papers, 150- 
151 ; positive Republican arguments, 
151-152 ; demands neutraUty on 
slavery, 184; criticism by Carl Schurz, 
258-260; arguments by Stephen, A. 
Douglas, 278-287 ; record of Brecken- 
ridge party, 333-335. 

Popular vote, 233. 



PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 



353 



Postmaster General, corruption, 135, 138 ; 
allows Southern postmasters to destroy 
Northern abolition mail, 22, 249. 

Potter, John F., challenged to a duel, 51. 

Powers, James, expulsion from South 
Carohna, 20. 

Presidency of the United States, investi- 
gated by Congress, 32 ; the procedure 
opposed by the president, 133 ; prece- 
dents on the point, 133-134 ; possibil- 
ity of a presidential election in the 
House of Representatives, 221-223; 
succession to the presidency, 222, note. 

Prices, cotton, 167 ; negroes, 167. 

Property in slaves, affirmed by citizens 
of Georgia, 25 ; in Dred Scott decision 
96 ; by inference denied in Republican 
platform, 237 ; in Breckenridge plat- 
form, 241-242. 

Provisional Constitution and Ordinances 
for the People of the United States, by 
John Brown, 21, note. 

Pryor, Roger A., threat of secession, 41- 
42; encounter with Owen Love joy 
in the House of Representatives, 
49-50 ; challenges member to a duel, 
51 ; letter from William L. Yancey 
on secession, 177; for secession, 178. 

Public lands, power of Congress over 
them denied, 96 ; the record of Congres- 
sional control before the Dred Scott 
decision, 158-159 ; probably open to 
negroes under Republican rule, 164; 
the Homestead Act, 201-204, 250. 

Public printing, corruption, 134-136. 

Questions to candidates and speakers: 
to William L. Yancey, 165-167, 176, 
180, 215, 216, 322-328; to John C. 
Breckenridge, 174-175, 184 ; to Stephen 
A. Douglas, 180, 185, 294-296. 

Raleigh, North Carolina, newspaper ad- 
vertisement of slaves, 17 ; speech by 
Stephen A. Douglas, 276. 

Randolph, John, on slavery, 162. 

Reagan, John H., praise of slavery, 62-63. 

Redemption of slaves, 63-64. 

Redpath, James, author of Life of John 
Brown, 9 ; evades arrest after John 
Brown's raid, 53. 

Republican party, see Abraham Lincoln, 
Hannibal Hamlin, Conventions, Cam- 
paign arguments. Aggression, Secession, 
Slavery, etc.; favorable criticism by 
Carl Schurz, 263-264. 

Repudiation of Northern debts, argu- 
ment for secession, 171. 

2a 



Revolution, right of, 166. 

Rhett, R. B., for secession, 178. 

Rhode Island, personal liberty law, 67; 
on territorial slavery in 1847, 157 ; 
Republican defeat of fusion, 233. 

Richmond, Virginia, expulsion of North- 
ern teachers, 21 ; refuses to hear lec- 
ture by Bayard Taylor, 21 ; mourns 
at election of Speaker Pennington, 45 ; 
adjourned session of the Democratic 
seceders ' convention, 109 ; the JDes- 
patch on persecution of Northern 
men in the South, 216. 

Rochester, New York, a citizen expelled 
from the South, 21 ; " Union-saving " 
meeting, 27-28 ; a fugitive slave, 66 ; 
"irrepressible conflict" speech by Wil- 
liam H. Seward, 118. 

Rowdyism in the campaign, uncommon, 
230. 

Roosevelt, James I., on the foreign slave 
trade, 78. 

Sanborn, Frank, arrest and release, 53. 

Sandusky, Ohio, kidnapping case, 71. 

Savannah, Georgia, expulsion of North- 
ern man, 20, 21 ; slaves of Savannah 
Blues in danger in New York, 69. 

Schurz, Carl, for abolition of slavery, 
193 ; speech at St. Louis, Missouri, 244. 

Scott, Winfield, inconspicuous in the 
campaign, 218. 

Secession, the right affirmed by South 
Carolina in 1852, 24 ; affirmed by citi- 
zens of Georgia, 25 ; arguments, 162- 
197 ; favorable arguments, 163-172 ; 
dangers to slavery lurking in a 
Republican administration, 163-167; 
property argument, 167-168; hope of 
foreign intervention, resulting from 
international influence of cotton, 168- 
170 ; influence of cotton in the North- 
ern states, 170-171 ; tariff argument, 
171 ; possibility of stealing United 
States patents, 171 ; possibility of 
repudiating Northern debts, 171 ; al- 
leged sympathy of the Northwest 
with the South. 172 ; arguments against 
secession, 172-173 ; increased taxa- 
tion, 172 ; fear of servile insurrection, 
172 ; alienation of Northern friends, 
173 ; secession impracticable, 173 ; 
right of acquired states to secede, 173 ; 
when to secede, 173 ; friendliness of 
Breckenridge party to secession, 174- 
178 ; Bell-Everetts oppose secession, 
180; Douglas Democrats oppose se- 



354 



PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 



cession, 180-184 ; secession record of 
many Southern Douglasites, 185- 
186 ; Republican ridicule of secession, 
187-189 ; general justification of se- 
cession, 195-196 ; justification of the 
so-called secession conspiracy, 196- 
197; discussion by Carl Schurz, 264- 
268; opposing words of Stephen A. 
Douglas, 295-296 ; hedging of William 
L. Yancey, 323-325 ; record of Breck- 
enridge party, 334-341. 

Sergeant at arms in House of Representa- 
tives, 44, note. 

Seward, William H., alleged inspirer of 
John Brown, 28 ; his presidency would 
cause secession, 42 ; draws bill on 
foreign slave trade, 78 ; reasons for 
loss of Republican presidential nom- 
ination, 117-122; his hopes, 117-118; 
the "irrepressible conflict," 118- 
119; forsakes the idea, 119-120; 
offends Border state conservatives, 
120-121; offense to the Know-Noth- 
ing party, 121 ; offense to the mer- 
chant class 121 ; corruption of the 
New York legislature, 121 ; hostility 
of the New York Tribune, 121-122 ; 
his feeling of superiority to Abraham 
Lincoln, 130, 213-214, 214, note; op- 
position to the Supreme Court, 155 ; 
ridicule of secession, 189 ; foresees de- 
struction of slavery, 191-192; his 
campaign speeches, 122-213; again 
takes u p with the " irrepressible conflict' ' 
idea, 213. 

Sherman, John, candidate for speaker in 
the House of Representatives, 32, 

- 41, 43. 

Singleton, O. R., threat of secession, 
42. 

Slaughter, James, letter from William 
L. Yancey on secession, 176. 

Slave auction, 60-61. 

Slave code for territories, demanded 
from Congress by the South, 102. 

Slave trade, domestic, 81-82. 

Slave trade, foreign, 73-81 ; captures, 
73-74 ; statistics, 74-75 ; profits, 74 ; 
stay of the market, 75 ; description 
of the ocean passage, 75 ; alleged com- 
plicity of the national administration, 
75-79 ; lax administration of law by 
Custom House officials, 76 ; lax ad- 
ministrative policy, 76-77 ; indifference 
of the United States Senate, 78 ; futile 
policy of the courts, 78-79; attitude 



of the political parties, 79-80; the 
Key West incident, 80-81 ; denounced 
by the Republican platform, 125 ; 
relation to the policy of territorial 
expansion, 156 ; would be curbed by a 
Republican administration, 164 ; Wil- 
liam L. Yancey on the slave trade, 305. 

Slavery, attacked by John Brown, 1 ; 
Brown's attitude, 4, 6; moral ground 
of opposition, 3-5 ; defense by wife 
of Senator Mason of Virginia, 14-15 ; 
attack by Mrs. Childs, 15-19; a 
cause of Southern industrial inferior- 
ity, 36 ; effect on the condition of the 
Southern soil, 37 ; abolition recom- 
mended, 37-40 ; testimony of many 
statesmen, 40 ; attack by Owen 
Love joy in the House of Represen- 
tatives, 47-51 ; attack by Charles 
Sumner, 56-58 ; popular discussion, 
59-91; attitude of churches, 85-89; 
negroes never citizens, 97 ; probably 
to be recognized as citizens by a Re- 
publican administration, 164 ; lia- 
bility of a servile insurrection, 172 ; 
Republican desire for abolition, 190- 
195 ; justification of secession in its 
defense, 195-196 ; justification of 
Republicans in opposing slavery, 196. 

Smith, Caleb, candidate for Republican 
presidential nomination, 122. 

Soul6, Pierre, a Douglasite with a seces- 
sion record, 185. 

South Carolina, calls a convention of 
Southern states, 24 ; industrial con- 
ditions compared with those in Penn- 
sylvania, 35 ; law on free negroes, 
83-84 ; support principles of William 
L. Yancey in 1847, 93 ; secedes from 
national Democratic convention, 107 ; 
represented in Richmond convention, 
108. 

Southern commercial convention, on 
the foreign slave trade, 79-80. 

Speakership of the House of Represen- 
tatives, contest in thirty-sixth Con- 
gress, 33-45 ; effect of the contest 
on the country, 45-46. 

Spoils system, see patronage. 

Spring elections, three states, 120. 

Springfield, Illinois, visit of William H. 
Seward to home of Abraham Lincoln, 
213-214; Republican parade and 
mottoes, 227-228. 

Springfield, Massachusetts, Republican 
hedges on popular sovereignty, 151. 



PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 



355 



St. Clair, Arthur,' dismissed from office, 
159. 

St. Clair Flats, Michigan, improvements 
desired, 189-199. 

St. Joseph, Missouri, speech of Wil- 
liam H. Seward, 192. 

St. Louis, Missouri, Evening News on the 
burning of slaves, 59-60 ; domestic 
slave trade, 82 ; Lincoln's majority, 
233; speech by Carl Schurz, 244. 

St. Paul, Minnesota, speech by William 
H. Seward, 189. 

Stearns, George L., supporter of John 
Brown, 13. 

Stephens, A. H., Douglasite with se- 
cession record, 185. 

Sumner, Charles, his assault followed by 
"Union-saving" meetings, 29 ; attacks 
slavery in the United States Senate, 
56-58 ; retort to Senator Chestnut, 
57-58 ; opposition to the Supreme 
Court, 155 ; favors abolition of slavery, 
193. 

Supreme Court of the United States, 
contest vnth. the Supreme Court of 
Wisconsin over habeas corpus, 67-69 ; 
its decision of the Lemmon case, 
nationalizing slavery, anticipated, 
70-71 ; a decision opening the foreign 
slave trade feared, 78-79 ; appealed to 
in the Kansas-Nebraska Act, 94 ; 
the Dred Scott decision, 96-97; 
sudden support of the Democratic 
party, 153 ; the previous hostility 
of the Democrats to the tribunal, 153- 
154 ; the sudden hostility of the Re- 
publicans, 154-155 ; reverses itself 
in the Dred Scott case, 160 ; its pos- 
sible control by the Republicans, 164. 

Syracuse, New York, Republican trans- 
parencies, 227. 

Taney, Roger B., Chief Justice of the 
United States Supreme Court, pro- 
motes Democratic factions by the 
Dred Scott decision, 92 ; the Dred 
Scott decision, 96-97 ; its acceptance 
by the South, 96-97. 

Tariff, protective in Republican plat- 
form, 125 ; opposition of the South, 
164, 171, 251 ; support of the Repub- 
licans, 197-198. 

Tavernier, slaver, 75. 

Taylor, Bayard, cancellation of lecture 
at Richmond, Virginia, 21. 

Taylor, Miles, Douglasite with secession 
record, 185. 



Taylor, Zachary, President of the United 
States, his death followed by "Union- 
saving" meetings, 29. 

Tennessee, source of the domestic slave 
trade, 82 ; bill on free negroes, 83. 

Territories controlled by Congress, 158- 
159; spread of slavery, 149-153; the 
Dred Scott decision fastens slavery on 
them, 96-99 ; probably to be cut 
up into free states by the Republicans, 
164. 

Texas, law on free negroes, 84 ; supports 
William L. Yancey in 1847, 93; se- 
cedes from the national Democratic 
convention, 107 ; sends delegates to 
both Richmond and Baltimore con- 
ventions, 108 ; secession justified, 173 ; 
persecutions of Northern men, 216- 
217. 

Tilton, Theodore, on Horace Greeley, 
220, 221, note. 

Tippecanoe, Indiana, popular sover- 
eignty speech in 1856 by John C. 
Breckenridge, 95-96. 

Tonnage duties recommended by Presi- 
dent Buchanan for St. Clair Flats, 
Michigan, 199. 

Trade, direct from the South to Europe, 
23. 

Transparencies, Democratic, 194, note, 
228, 229 ; Republican, 226-228. 

Traveling slaves, tampered with in the 
North, 67-71. 

Troy, New York, rescue of a fugitive 
slave, 66. 

Tyler, John, inconspicuous in the cam- 
paign, 218. 

"Union-saving" meetings, 26-29; pro- 
slavery sentiments at New York, 26 ; 
the same in Massachusetts, 27 ; reso- 
lutions at Rochester, New York, 
27-28 ; criticism of the movement in 
the South, 29 ; its criticism by the 
Republicans, 29-30. 

Vallandigham, Clement L., on John 
Brown, 2 ; interviews Brown, 4. 

Van Buren, Martin, inconspicuous in 
the campaign, 218. 

Vera Cruz, Mexico, fire of the American 
fleet on the Mexicans, 144; unnoticed 
by the Democratic platform, 146. 

Vermont, personal liberty law, 66-67 ; 
small Breckenridge vote, 233. 

Vicksburg, Mississippi, the Sun on the 
burning of slaves, 60. 

Virginia, on personal liberty laws, 67, 



356 



PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 



note ; on refusal of Northern states to 
honor her extradition papers, 69; 
sources of the domestic slave trade, 
82 ; law on free negroes, 84 ; support 
slavery in the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, 86; small Bell majority, 
233 ; small Republican vote, 233. 
Wade, Benjamin F., candidate for Re- 
publican presidential nomination, 122. 
Wages, withheld from slaves, 17. 
Walker, William, filibuster, 146-147. 
Wanderer, slaver, 73. 
War, Secretary of, corruption, 138-139. 
Ward, Artemas, on Stephen A. Douglas, 

207-209. 
Washington, George, on slavery, 40, 

161. 
Water Witch, attacked in Paraguay, 146. 
Watertown, New York, kidnapping case, 

71. 
Webster, Daniel, little remembered in the 

campaign, 220. 
Weed, Thurlow, Republican boss in New 

York, 121. 
Wendell, Cornelius, testimony on the 
corruption of the administration, 
134-136. 
Wentworth, John, ridicules secession, 

188; desires fall of slavery, 191. 
Wesleyan Methodist Church, splits from 

the parent church, 85. 
West Newbury, Massachusetts, mourns 

for John Brown, 9. 
Wickliffe, Robert C, Douglasite with 

secession record, 185. 
Wide Awakes, origin, 225 ; spread, 225- 
226 ; nature, 226 ; their parades, 226- 
228. 
Wigfall, Louis T., ridicules following 

"the Fathers," 162-163. 
Wildfire, slaver, 73. 
William, slaver, 73. 
Wilmot Proviso, supported bj' a faction 

of the Democratic party, 93. 
Wilson, Henry, introduces bill in United 
States Senate on the foreign slave 
trade, 78; advice to Illinois Repub- 
licans to return Stephen A. Douglas 



to the United States Senate, 101 ; 
candidate for the Republican presi- 
dential nomination, 122 ; opposition to 
the Supreme Court, 155. 

Winsted, Connecticut, newspaper sen- 
timent on John Brown, 31. 

Wisconsin, personal liberty law, 67 ; 
contest by the State Supreme Court 
with the United States Supreme Court 
over habeas corpus, 67-69 ; on terri- 
torial slavery in 1847, 157; its terri- 
torial laws submitted to Congress, 
159 ; small Breckenridge vote, 233. 

Wise, Henry A., on John Brown, 3 ; 
criticism of Wise's conduct at Har- 
per's Ferry, 22; speaks to Southern 
medical students, 22 ; on trade with 
the North, 23; speech on Southern 
agricultural conditions, 37. 

Worcester, Massachusetts, the Spy on 
Abraham Lincoln, 211. 

Worth, Daniel, tried for selling copies 
of the Impending Crisis, 46. 

Yancey, William L., leader of a faction 
in the Democratic party, 92 ; oppo- 
sition to the Wilmot Proviso, 93; 
opposition to the Compromise of 
1850, 94; on "the Fathers," 163; 
on the menace to slavery of a Re- 
publican administration, 165-167 ; on 
the property argument for secession, 
168 ; speeches and sentiments for 
secession, 176-178, 178, note; ex- 
coriates W. G. Brownlow, 180 ; al- 
leged offer to him of vice presidency 
on the Douglas ticket, 186 ; his words 
used to prove the secessionist plot to 
break up the Charleston convention, 
197; characterization, 214; campaign 
speeches in the North, 214-218; 
further on the Republican menace 
to slavery, 215, 217-218; on the 
persecution of Northern men in the 
South, 215-217 ; reaps credit for the 
views of John C. Calhoun, 220; 
New York speech in full, 301 ; on 
secession and coercion, 323-327. 

Zuloaga, Mexican general, 142. 



JAN 281949 



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The Opening of the Mississippi 

A struggle for supremacy in the American interior. 

By FREDERICK AUSTIN OGG, 

Fellow in History, Harvard University. Cloth, i2mo, %2.oo net 



Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama 
By WALTER L. FLEMING, Ph.D., 

Professor of History in West Virginia University. Cloth, 8vo, %^.oo net 



The History of South Carolina 

From the inception of the Colony to the end of the Revolution. 

By EDWARD McCREADY, LL.D., 

Member of the Bar at Charleston, S.C, and President of the Historical Society 
of South Carolina. Four volumes, each, cloth, 8vo, $J.jO net 



South Carolina as a Royal Province 
By W. ROY SMITH, Ph.D., 

Associate Professor in History at Bryn Mawr College. Cloth, 8vo, $2.^0 net 



North Carolina 

A Study in English Colonial Government. 

By CHARLES LEE RAPER, Ph.D., 

Associate Professor in Economics and Associate Professor of History in the 
University of North Carolina. Cloth, IJ + 260 pp., Svo, %2.00 net 



A History of the Pacific Northwest 
By JOSEPH SCHAFER, 

Head of the Department of History, University of Oregon. With maps and 
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History of the State of Washington 
By EDMOND S. MEANY, 

Professor of History in the University of Washington. Cloth, $2.2^ net 



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The Economic History of Virginia 
in the Seventeenth Century 

By PHILIP ALEXANDER BRUCE 

An inquiry into the material condition of the people, based upon original and 
cantemporaneous letters. Cloth, vi + 64J pp., %S-00 net 

From the Cotton Field to the Cotton Mill 
By HOLLAND THOMPSON, 

A study of the industrial transition in North Carolina. 

Sonetime Fellow in Columbia University. Cloth, 820 pp., I2mo, $1.50 net 



Boston: The Place and The People 
By M. A. DeWOLFE HOWE 

With over one hundred illustrations, including many from pen drawings. 

Cloth, 127110, $2.00 net 

Philadelphia: The Place and The People 
By AGNES REPPLIER 

With eighty-two illustrations from drawings by Ernest C. Peixotto. 

Cloth, i2mo, $2.00 net 

New Orleans : The Place and The People 
By GRACE KING 

With eighty-three illustrations from drawings by Frances E. Jones. 

Cloth, l2mo, $2.00 net 

Charleston : The Place and The People 
By MRS. H. JULIEN RAVENEL 

Illustrated from photographs and drawings by Vernon Howe Bailey. 

Cloth, l2mo, %2.00 net 

The Lower South in American History 
By WILLIAM GARROTT BROWN 

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The Promise of American Life 
By HERBERT CROLY 

Cloth, l2mo, %2JO net 
President J. G. Schurman of Cornell University writes of this 
book : " I regard Mr. Croly's book as a serious and weighty contribu- 
tion to contemporary American politics. A treatise on the fundsmental 
political ideas of the American people which attempts to develop their 
full content and to re-read American history in the light of these de- 
veloped ideas cannot, of course, be made light literature ; but the author 
brings to the weighty subject with which he deals a lucid and vivacious 
style and a logical sense of arrangement. And thoughtful readers who 
are interested in fundamental political principles, once they have started 
the book, are pretty certain to finish it. . . . For my own part I have 
found the book exceedingly stimulating. It is also instructive, for 
the author seems to be thoroughly versed in the modern political 
and economic history not only of America but of Europe as well. 
Finally, the volume has the immense attraction of dealing with a sub- 
ject which of all political subjects is now most prominent in the mind 
not only of thoughtful citizens but one might almost say, of the Ameri- 
can people." 

The Spirit of America 

By Professor HENRY VAN DYKE 

Cloth, i2mo, Ready February l6, IQIO 
The basis of this volume is the addresses delivered by Professor van 
Dyke in Paris as the exchange professor sent by America to the 
Sorbonne. The author's wide experience with many distinct aspects 
of our national life, his great ability, and his personal sincerity and 
thoughtfulness, all combine to render him eminently fitted for the im- 
portant task which he has undertaken in this book. To perceive the 
enduring and valuable elements in the kaleidoscope of the America of 
to-day, requires a far-seeing, keen eye, whose vision has been trained 
by long preparation. In this book the fruit of years of application and 
reflection is clearly apparent. 



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